People and Parliament: Representative Rights and the English Revolution

People and Parliament Representative Rights and the English Revolution George Yerby People and Parliament This page...

Author: George Yerby

25 downloads 1133 Views 883KB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

People and Parliament Representative Rights and the English Revolution

George Yerby

People and Parliament

This page intentionally left blank

People and Parliament Representative Rights and the English Revolution George Yerby

© George Yerby 2008 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identiﬁed as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 9780230553224 hardback ISBN-10: 0230553222 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

For my parents


Contents

Acknowledgements

x

Abbreviations

xi

1 Introduction: Pasts and Presents

1

The danger of jettisoning the past. Inapplicable modes of thought. The divorce from context. Historians and the devaluation of the democratic tradition. The limits of empiricism. Broader perspectives. Reconnecting.

2 Legislative Beginnings: 1603–1610

24

The developing concept of sovereign representative legislation in the sixteenth century. The particular interests of the localities. The peak of legislative activity, 1603–1610. Interruptions: the administrative impasse of 1610.

3 The Constitutional Dimension The “simple handicrafts men” of Minehead, and their fight for political rights. Dartmouth and Nottingham and the defence of free elections Dartmouth and the impositions dispute. Merchant/Gentry relations. The growth of an opposition perspective. Absolute property versus discretionary levy. Parliament versus patent.

4 The Foreign Policy Dimension The broad scope of the public interest. Foreign affairs and the West Country economy. The mercantile perspective again. The question of choice in war and taxation. Nottinghamshire and the evaluation of parliamentary services. vii

38

43

51

85

viii Contents

5 Legislative Ambitions Frustrated: 1614–1640 Parliaments without legislation: 1614 and 1621. Parliament as a point of contact between representatives. Local interests becoming common interests. The growing demand for a legislative programme, and the decreasing opportunity. The neglect of the counsels of parliament: 1625–1629. Changing views of government. Towards accountability. The assault on the king’s discretionary powers: the Petition of Right. The tonnage and poundage controversy. The “often abortions of parliament” becomes a principal grievance. The impasse is complete. Government without parliaments: 1629–1640. The kingdom “bereaved of the legislative power”.

6 The Vacuum Filled: The Triennial Act of 1641

108

126 145

149

A new constitutional balance. The benefits of guaranteed assemblies: the core proposition of parliamentarianism. The significance of parliamentary law as “that which makes and constitutes a kingdom”: the practical and philosophical justification for a representative element in government.

7 Politics and Religion: The Balance of Motivation

177

“The Song of the Puritans of Nottingham”. The spirit of initiative among the Godly, and the shared belief in the power of assent.

8 Statute Law and Civil War: “A Right That Induced Men to Fight”

206

The sovereignty of parliamentary law. The “unlimited power” that derived from elective consent. The right not to be concluded but by the representative. The rationale of Nottinghamshire’s leading parliamentarians – “Wise William” Pierrepont, and “the steersman himself” Henry Ireton.

9 The Sovereignty of Parliament The final step. Walter Yonge’s notebook, and “Ireton’s Petition”.

237

Contents

ix

10 Epilogue: “A Parliamentary Man”

257

Appendix 1: Thomas Hobbes and the Idea of the Representative

265

Appendix 2: Dartmouth’s Parliamentary Diary from the Impositions Debate of 1610

269

Notes

274

Bibliography

305

Index

314

Acknowledgements First and foremost, I should thank Norah Carlin for her patient reading, and wise and expert criticism of this work as it progressed. I owe her more than I can ever say or repay. I would also like to thank David and Deidre Hayton, Alex King, Annabel Gregory and Tom Callaghan for their friendship and encouragement, both personal and academic, over many years. The knowledge of their trust and support has, in an important sense, kept me up to the task. A more general debt is owed to the writings of R.H. Tawney and Christopher Hill, whose exploration of context and connectedness in history first aroused my enthusiasm for the subject, in a more hopeful era some decades ago. And last but not least I want to express my gratitude to my publishers Michael Strang and Ruth Ireland for all their care and consideration, qualities that are not so common that they can be allowed to go unmentioned.

x

Abbreviations

Add. Ms APC Brenner, Merchants and Revolution BL CSP Dom. Clarendon, Rebellion CJ Commons Debates 1621 Commons Debates 1628 Commons Debates 1629 Cross, Church and People Cust, Forced Loan Darrell, Trial Dartmouth Borough Debates 1610 Exeter Corporation Earle, Diary Gardiner, History of England Gardiner, Civil War Gardiner, Commonwealth

Additional Manuscript, British Library Acts of the Privy Council Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict and London’s Overseas Traders: 1550–1653. British Library Calendar of State Papers Domestic Edward, Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Great Rebellion Commons Journal Commons Debates in 1621, ed. Notestein, Relf and Simpson Commons Debates in 1628, ed. Johnson, Keeler, Jansson and Bidwell Commons Debates for 1629, ed. Notestein and Relf Claire Cross, Church and People, 1450–1660 Richard Cust, The Forced Loan and English Politics, 1626–1628. Oxford 1987 John Darrell, The Trial of Maister Darrell Dartmouth Borough Archive, Devon Record Office Parliamentary Debates of 1610, ed. S.R.Gardiner Exeter Corporation Archive. Devon Record Office The Diary of Sir Walter Earle, British Library, Add. Ms. 18,597 S.R. Gardiner, History of England 1603–1642. London 1883–1884. S.R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War. London 1893 S.R. Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate. London 1903 xi

xii Abbreviations

Harsnett, Discovery Hirst, Authority and Conflict HMC Holles, Diary Hutchinson, Life LJ Nicholas, Debates Nicholas, Diary Notestein, Commons Paulet, Diary Private Journals Proceedings 1610 Proceedings 1614 Proceedings 1625 Proceedings 1628 PCC Rushworth, Collections Russell, Parliaments and Politics Stac. SP Totnes Borough TNA TRHS Two Diaries

Samuel Harsnett, A Discovery of the Fraudulent Practices of John Darrell. London 1599 Derek Hirst, Authority and Conflict: England. London 1986 Historical Manuscripts Commission The Diary of John Holles, 1624. BL, Harleian Ms. 6383 Lucy Hutchinson, The Life of Lucy and John Hutchinson, ed. J. Hutchinson. London 1846 Journal of the House of Lords Edward Nicholas, Proceedings and Debates in the House of Commons 1620–1. Oxford 1766 Edward Nicholas, Diary of Proceedings in the House of Commons, 1624. TNA, SP14/166 W. Notestein, The House of Commons, 1604– 10. Yale 1971 Sir Richard Paulet’s Diary, 1610. Hampshire RO. Jervoise of Herriard Ms. 44 M 69/ F2/15/1 Private Journals of the Long Parliament, ed. V. Snow and A. Young. New haven 1982 Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ed. E.R. Foster. New Haven 1966 Proceedings in Parliament 1614, ed. M. Jansson. Philadelpia 1988. Proceedings in Parliament 1625, ed. M. Jansson and W.B. Bidwell. Yale 1987. Proceedings in Parliament 1628, ed. Johnson, Keeler, Cole, Bidwell. New Haven 1977–1983. Prerogative Court of Canterbury JohnRushworth,HistoricalCollections.London 1659–1701 Conrad Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, 1621–1629. Oxford 1979 Star Chamber State Papers Totnes Borough Archive, Devon Record Office The National Archive Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Two Diaries of the Long Parliament, ed. M. Jansson. Yale 1984

Abbreviations xiii

Underdown, Prides Purge VCH Whitelocke, Memorials Yonge, Diary

David Underdown, Prides Purge: Politics in The Puritan Revolution. Oxford 1971. Victoria County History Bulstrode Whitelocke, Memorials of English Affairs. London 1733 The Diary of Walter Yonge, ed. G. Roberts, Camden Society 41. London 1848.


1 Introduction: Pasts and Presents

The danger of jettisoning the past. Inapplicable modes of thought. The divorce from context. Historians and the devaluation of the democratic tradition. This volume seeks to describe how ordinary people in the English localities in the first half of the seventeenth century could set a value on the services of parliament which heralded a change in the political position of the representative assembly. The evidences and characters relate to two distinctive regions of the kingdom – the West Country (with particular reference to Devon and Somerset) and the East Midland county of Nottinghamshire. There is also a thematic core in the tracing of concepts of representation. Thus, in various ways a combination of balance and focus is attempted. The study describes the purposes for which the people of these areas and their representatives sought to use parliament, the perspective in which they perceived their parliamentary interests, and the significance of their attempts to obtain a documentary record of parliament’s activities and powers and maintain the facility of parliamentary services. It suggests a reciprocal relationship between locality and centre and between the economic and the political spheres. It illustrates the discourse through which a growing public estimation of the usefulness of representative rights was expressed, and on the basis of which people came to project an enhanced political role for parliament. Ultimately, it reveals the kind of positive momentum that underlay the development of parliamentary institutions. This might seem an unsurprising line of approach, but in fact it is an interpretation of the period which runs counter to the most powerful 1

2


“revisionist” trends of recent historical writing, which have tended to deny that there was any definite motive behind the first steps towards a representative polity. This study thus has more in common with what may be called the “progressive” views, which were the dominant influences up to the middle of the twentieth century, until the revisionist challenge was launched some three decades ago. The most enduring strand in traditional history was the “Whig” interpretation, which was the prevailing orthodoxy for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Whig thesis held in essence that the disputes of the seventeenth century did reflect an inclination for constitutional change and the establishment of a representative element in political affairs. It was also assumed that this could be seen as progress towards a more enlightened form of government. It was an assessment which the reading public seemed to share. The Whig interpretation was notable for its broad popular reception, as well as its academic authority.1 In the circumstances of the Second World War, it was aptly characterised as an alliance between the British people and their history,2 resting ultimately on the notion that parliamentary institutions had been fought for in the seventeenth century, and were worth defending now in the face of an assault from an extreme, anti-pluralist regime. It is true that the Whig school sometimes exhibited its own brand of chauvinism in the supposition of a special inclination to liberty in the Anglo-Saxon character, and this nationalistic aspect of its appeal should be treated with caution. It would also be extremely unwise to assume that progress is in any sense inevitable. But neither should we allow the over-reaction of some modern historians to create the impression that any history of traditions is to be distrusted, as a “drums and trumpets” affair. One thing at least should make us hesitate before discarding the Whig view – it underpinned a democratic perspective, and in so doing, gave the study of history an unusual degree of constructive force. Ironically, while the Whig interpretation has been losing its historical status, it seems to have been vindicated geographically. The second half of the twentieth century has seen the widespread supplanting of totalitarian and imperial regimes by representative governments of some kind. And like the Whigs, modern day liberal opinion would see this as progress towards the only really legitimate form of polity. This may seem a contradiction in view of the revisionist tendency to deny a similarly positive momentum in earlier periods. But democratic concepts have always been open to selective application in accordance with the changing opportunities and dangers, theoretical or practical, for the forces of hegemony in the West. Traditional liberalism could still

Introduction: Pasts and Presents

3

define itself in opposition to the autocracies of the past. But modern liberals, facing different challenges, have usually preferred to think that the personal monarchies of the seventeenth century were quite acceptable to their people, since to suppose otherwise would seem to support the revolutionary ideas of Marxist history, which became prominent in the mid-twentieth century. In fact, it can be suggested that Whig constitutionalism was not the revisionists’ principal target. It was rather the victim of collateral damage. For it was really the Marxist view of progress (as determined by the force of the economic dimension, and leading, in crude summary, to the dictatorship of the proletariat) that revisionists wanted to rebut. And since Marxism could comfortably accommodate the “rise of parliament” in seventeenth-century England as the bourgeois stage of the revolutionary process, the revisionists had to reject any such notion. Thus, paradoxically, it was in the liberal pursuit of a dispute with twentieth-century totalitarianism that a long accepted and constructive view of our parliamentary past was in danger of being jettisoned. This perhaps goes some way to explain the peculiar willingness of modern historians to assume a negative attitude towards the development of parliamentary institutions. It is part of the contention of this study that our view of parliamentary history has been distorted by a “technical” failure to clarify or disentangle the balance of relationship between past and present. The illusion has grown that when we reject a particular interpretation as the product of theory, we free ourselves of bias; whereas in truth we may be burying it deeper. The way that we think about the present always reflects and influences our opinion of the past, and what we hope the past will become. An aversion to the Marxist model may not have been the only factor prejudicing the revisionist view. It may also have been a reaction against the prospect of “real” or direct democracy, which seemed to be a serious possibility for a while in the 1960s. It is certainly likely that the negative assumptions of recent historians have contributed something to our increasingly neglectful or cynical attitude towards the democratic practices that we do possess. For even as the representative theory is projected across the globe, the domestic evaluation of the parliamentary form appears to have reached an all-time low. The peak of voter involvement was in 1950, when the general election turnout was 83.9 per cent. There was then a gradual though uneven falling away, and a dramatic dip to 59.4 per cent in 2001. It was a sharp enough drop to indicate a step-change in the degree of importance that people attached to representative democracy. This seemed to be confirmed in 2005, when despite

4


the wider resort to easily abused forms of postal voting, the figure rose only to 61.4 per cent. So how far is this kind of disengagement from parliamentary traditions associated with fading historical perceptions? Historians clearly do have an important role to play in these matters. Our sense of the value of political institutions as a developing process must depend in large part on a historical perspective. Equally, there is no doubt that, in a general sense, this dimension has been seriously undermined in recent years. Eric Hobsbawm has pinpointed one of the most “characteristic and eerie phenomena” of the last few decades – what he calls “the destruction of the past”. He sees a danger that people now grow up “in a sort of permanent present, lacking any organic relation to the public past of the times they live in”.3 It is a very troubling insight, all the more so because permanent is probably not quite the right word. For the same kind of insouciance that is dividing us from a lively appreciation of the past may also be denying us a viable future. In part we are contending with the pace of technological change, which is making the modern way of life rather different from anything that has gone before, with forms of culture and communication so self-contained that history might cease to appear relevant. But this of course is a reason for reinforcing our consciousness of the past, and maintaining an awareness of the basic conditions on which human life still depends. The increasingly critical problem of sustaining the viability of the natural environment is the most obvious way in which the study of history has become peculiarly urgent. Historians ought to be performing a crucial task by highlighting these relationships. Instead, again for the largely tangential reason of its association with Marxism, they have neglected the concept of connection to an economic or ecological context. Eric Hobsbawm represents a more inclusive approach. To counteract the problem of the permanent present, he stresses that historians need to be “more than simply chroniclers, remembrancers and compilers”, and that the aim should be to explain why things happen, and how they are linked together.4 To an objective view, it might seem very evident that the idea of chronological linkage must constitute the essential working character of history. One might suppose that it could not be otherwise. Yet this is precisely what has been lost. In the teaching context, the problem has been exacerbated by the trend to modular courses, which encourage a focus on isolated topics at the expense of a broader perspective. But of greatest concern again is the extent to which historians themselves have directly contributed to the diminishing relevance


5

of the subject. Hobsbawm is something of an exception in his willingness to see the past in terms of a connection with the present. Many of the most influential historians of recent decades have specifically set out to do the opposite. They have assumed that scholars have the capacity and obligation to look at the past as a discrete factual entity, completely without reference to the present. This is indeed the chosen methodological basis of modern revisionist history. It has proved surprisingly influential, and some of its main tenets have gone largely unchallenged. It may also have proved very damaging. To deliberately separate past and present obviously reduces our ability to use historical understanding for practical benefit. And this has particular implications in the modern context, where a serious environmental imbalance seems to have arisen from a failure to monitor the results of our actions. Dis-applied history is the background motif for a generation which actually seems incapable of conceiving a rational response to the ecological endgame that threatens it. If we are without the means of adjusting our lifestyle, or recognising a link between cause and effect, this is in part because we have been deprived of the model for evaluating change. Our capacity to think in terms of causation has been discouraged by the very discipline that ought to promote it. A historical perspective should offer the facility of identifying trends and tensions, balances and connections, over the course of time. But the modern historical approach has favoured a kind of chronological segregation. This at the very least has failed to help with the difficulty we have in thinking outside the immediate dimension. Our near-sighted view of time is encapsulated in the way that we define and defend our prospects in the short term, even though it may be destroying our prospects of long-term survival. Part of the conceptual restriction is our dependence on “mechanical” modes of thought. At the level of specific technological ingenuity our powers are undoubted. They have developed to the stage where we are in the process of altering the climatic conditions of the planet. But we appear to lack the general or rounded intelligence to adapt when we see the harm done. And once again, empirical methods in history reflect the same limitations. Our problems are compounded when historians embrace an artificial and restrictive concept of precise knowledge, and discard the kind of inclusive, connected forms of analysis that are obviously required. In be to to

a historiographical sense, the negative and disintegrative effect can quickly illustrated. At the end of the 1960s the revisionists began develop an assault on Whig and Marxist interpretations, seeking rebut the idea that there was any positive or popular impetus for

6


the advancement of parliament in the seventeenth century.5 Although they did not actually deny that parliament had acquired a significantly enhanced political position by the end of that century, they explained it in terms of accident rather than design – the unlooked for result of extraneous circumstances. At the risk of caricature, the “revised” seventeenth century may be outlined as follows. There was no constitutional ambition in parliamentarianism. It was only the Bishop’s wars with Scotland that brought parliament to the front of the political stage in 1640 – and if for a time the Commons became the focus of social and political revolution, this was merely “functional” radicalism, induced by the pressure of events or by religious motivations. By the same token, the Restoration simply returned the nation to a previously satisfied state of personal monarchy; and although there was another revolution in 1688, this had more to do with the foreign-policy needs of William of Orange than the domestic demands of the English political nation. Finally, although parliament had, in the event, acquired a permanent place at the centre of affairs and a position of residual sovereignty by 1700, this was only because the financial pressures of the wars of the 1690s obliged the new king to accept the Commons as a necessary feature of government. The kingdom had thus taken a definite but, in revisionist terms, unintentional step towards a representative form of polity. The revisionist view has not gone entirely unchallenged. In the 1990s, “counter-revisionists” began to react against some aspects of the interpretation, and sought to revive the idea that there was constitutional tension and conflict between crown and parliament in the early seventeenth century.6 But they did not treat this as a basis for radicalism, or a platform for progressive political demands in 1640. They still tended to interpret the struggle for parliamentary liberties in a conservative light, as a defence or confirmation of existing liberties, rather than an impetus for change. In other words, they did not really confront the real force of the revisionist proposition that the further development of parliament was essentially negative or accidental.7 The difficulty of breaking away from this view arises in part from the methodological constraints that the revisionists managed to impose. They condemned Whig historians for employing the mirror of “hindsight”, and allowing a sentimental attachment to modern parliamentary institutions to delude them into thinking that the people of the seventeenth century were working towards that end. The revisionists claimed that, by contrast, their own conclusions were based on studying the period purely in the light of its own evidences. No generation of historians had ever sought to discredit another in quite the same


7

comprehensive fashion, or put so much weight on the assertion of empirical method. It might have been thought that the stance was somewhat exposed. For even a cursory consideration indicates that the methodological claim is not a realistic one. A scientist friend, when told that historians seemed to believe that they could look at the past empirically, said simply – “but how can that possibly be?” He meant that the study of history is by definition incapable of satisfying the basic requirements of empirical practice – that is, observation and experiment. Historical empiricism can thus be seen as an anomaly in terms of concepts of knowledge. We can justifiably suggest that it only appears as a viable proposition where there is a powerful vested interest in wishing it to be so. The motives did of course include an element of politics. As E.H. Carr noted, those who levelled the charge of “determinism” could have a specifically subjective intent, seeking to discount in advance historical developments which they preferred not to recognise.8 Revisionists could use empiricist assumptions to dismiss as preconceived the interpretations that they found politically unwelcome. Thus the invocation of the empirical mode often concealed an especially sharp polemical aim. But there were also more neutral, cultural factors that tended to encourage the trend to empiricism. Perhaps most important was the premium that modern society places on scientific and professional status. Michel Foucault saw it as a change in the dominant character of intellectual activity. After the middle of the twentieth century, the “universal” intellectual (who sought to counter-pose the idea of justice against power and the abuse of wealth) was supplanted by the “specific” intellectual, whose work emphasised instead “a direct and local relationship to scientific knowledge”.9 So historians began to favour the restricted and technical rather than the evaluative forms of analysis. There were strong professional temptations for historians to seek to associate themselves with the scientific axiom of studying the physical character of things as they are. In the context of the natural sciences this is a valid definition and a realistic aspiration. In the historical field the principle can be stated with the same simple power, and purely as a sound-byte, it may seem unexceptionable. Moreover, the idea of accumulating and analysing factual information can be presented as a convenient, practical modus operandi – something that is much more difficult to formulate if the real limitations of the historical discourse are taken into account. Historians have therefore found it all too easy to forget that the empirical mode has no true application in their own discipline. The revisionist trend brought with it a tendency to act as if

8


historical method was no longer problematic, and empiricism could be unreservedly embraced as the true, objective way. Even those who do not fully share revisionist interpretations are still happy to assert that the Whig “error” has been eliminated, and each historical period is now studied purely in its own light.10 Thus most historians have come to operate under the false prospectus of looking at the past “as it was”. A rare doubting voice, Simon Schama, once pointed out that the quality of distance or objectivity is one of those “unattainable values in which historians have put so much faith”.11 The word faith does indeed apply here perhaps more literally than he intended. It is both striking and unsurprising that the empirical mode has usually been articulated as a kind of dogma – something that was not really open to discussion. It is a revealing paradox that the force of historical empiricism rests on its assertion as an idea, rather than its factual feasibility.

The limits of empiricism We can suggest then that to define the discipline on the basis of an empirical premise is a rather bigger error than anything of which the Whigs may have been guilty. Partiality is inherent and inevitable in every aspect of historical study, and to specifically proceed as if it can be otherwise adds a new level of delusion, and often precludes the more open, balanced insights that we can obtain. This chapter seeks to outline the variety of ways in which empirical practice presents the appearance of fact, rather than the reality. And it indicates that in focusing and depending on an assumption of knowledge that is not truly valid, we tend to neglect the more consistent and constructive processes of thought that are available. The conceptual weaknesses of empiricism in history have often been recognised, though usually by writers from outside the profession. E.H. Carr, whose background was in politics and journalism rather than academic history, said simply that it was a “preposterous fallacy” to work on the basis that historians really can act as objective observers reflecting autonomous evidences.12 “Post-modern” theorists, though operating in rather different perspectives from Carr, would share his general doubts about the possibility of applying empirical principles in the field of history. To paraphrase Roland Barthes, historical empiricism is a sleight of hand, whereby from within the discourse historians refer to their evidence as if it were still outside the discourse.13 The force of this logic has not deterred historians from attempting formal justifications of empiricism, though they have relied heavily on


9

that capacity for simple assertion, which is the real tactical strength of the mode. The best known such defence, by the leading revisionist Geoffrey Elton, acknowledged the inevitable problem of selectivity which confronts all historians, but suggested that, somehow, this can be overcome by rigorous methods of scholarship, making sure that all the evidence is scrutinised, and, of course, looking at the past “in its own right”.14 This plainly sidestepped the real difficulty that even when “all” the evidence has been gathered in, it remains nothing more than fragmentary hints of the actual character of the past. The circumstances are not in any case of a nature that could ever be reduced to fact in the way that empiricism presupposes. The past is only given substantial or coherent form by the intervention of historians, with all their professional, personal and political partialities. A more recent survey of historical theory by Richard Evans acknowledges the inadequacy of Elton’s position, but at the same time rejects the post-modernist view that the writing of history is essentially no different from the writing of fiction. This is a difficult circle to square. Evans says that the writers who have railed against “documentary fetishism” have been wrong to suppose that Elton’s assumptions are a universal orthodoxy among political historians.15 Yet, in a disappointing conclusion, he comes close to simply reaffirming Elton’s stance. He asserts that history is an empirical discipline, and that by adopting an approach that is “thorough” and “scrupulous”, the historian is capable of producing “a reconstruction of past reality” that can be regarded as “true”. Then he adds, “even if the truth is our own”.16 The post-modernists could be forgiven for thinking that their case had been made for them. It has generally, and perhaps understandably, been difficult for historians to chart a middle way between the desire to be factual and the acknowledgement of partiality. The fallback position has been the restatement of the empirical goal, even when the confusions and contradictions are most glaring. Thus, the counter-revisionist Ann Hughes can berate her opponents for not admitting their anti-Marxist and anti-sixties prejudices, while almost in the same breath she repeats the mantra that historians ought to try to keep their prejudices out of their work.17 In this instance the revisionists have logic on their side, they are keeping their prejudices out of their work in the only way possible, by pretending that they do not have them. Another prominent counter-revisionist, Tom Cogswell, specifically accepts the revisionist insistence that they can only be answered “evidence with evidence”, neither side seeming to notice a tension between the assumption of different polemical positions and the supposition of a common empiricist method.18 A great

10


friend in the historical profession (who I hope will remain so even after the telling of this anecdote) once came to me in some dismay after a quarrel with his editor. They had reached completely opposite conclusions from a particular piece of evidence. “But my opinion is just as valid as his,” insisted my friend, “I mean, we are all empiricists now, aren’t we?” The tale seems to reveal the character of historical empiricism as a flag of convenience rather than a true state. The inner contradiction is manifest. Historians claim to be looking at the past as it was, even while in the process of reconstructing it to what must necessarily be their own design. This also indicates the practical dangers and disadvantages of proceeding under the misapprehension of objectivity. We are led into the trap of simply accumulating studies as if they are part of a pure historical knowledge, when what we really require is a framework of analysis which recognises that they are not. Empirical practice prescribes a rigorous attention to particulars, as if this guarantees a factual result. But since the evidences and their treatments are endlessly variable and fragmented, a restrictive viewpoint actually creates an environment in which every kind of prejudice and spin can find refuge. There is thus a stage at which an exclusively close focus becomes counter-productive in its own terms, and we face the depressing prospect that the more work that is done, the greater the confusion becomes – which is the very opposite of what empiricism is supposed to promise. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the state of writing on the history of the English Revolution. Civil War scholars notoriously conduct ferocious personal feuds over differences of interpretation, finding common ground only in the somewhat incongruous claim to empirical method. The result seems to defy synthesis. Norah Carlin has made a recent and perhaps the best and most clear-sighted attempt to chart a way through the labyrinth of seventeenth-century historiography. She acknowledges that “certainty can never be achieved”, but nevertheless believes that historians can “continually try to improve or refine our historical studies”. In truth, however, her survey of the field indicates that although we may well be refining the period in terms of dissecting it into smaller and smaller pieces, we are getting steadily further away from refining it in terms of a clearer understanding. She notes that even among revisionists themselves there is no consensus. She describes some interpretations as “wishful thinking”, and believes that others, though persistently influential, “can only be sustained by ignoring most of what went on in the Long Parliament”.19


11

What is of special interest here is the way that the empirical mode actually encourages and consolidates blinkered interpretations. For the anomaly is that all such theories march under the banner of detailed, objective scholarship. They are in fact sustained by the license to assume an empirical perspective, without the need to satisfy any broader requirement of balance and logic. There is a danger that we rest content with the semblance of factual authority created by the use of documentary sources, and a close reference to other such analyses. Thus too often academic studies come to be evaluated not in terms of the actual, rational force of argument and evidence that they present, but rather on the basis of whether they appear to carry the weight and substance of empirical form. Paradoxically, the question of whether they do formally prove what they claim is often obscured. And the fact that there may be more general arguments, general connections, and general evidences that do hold water is discounted in favour of the illusion of depth. So the permutations and contradictions tend to proliferate. The irony is that once again historians are simply providing a justification for the post-modern relativist critique that historical writing can never be anything more than an interesting collection of equally valid (or invalid) subjectivities, with no independent worth as judgements of context or causation.

Broader perspectives So the starting point for this study is the need to acknowledge the problem. It cannot be a valid perspective to proceed as if history is a matter of gathering all the specific evidence for objective assessment, when in truth none of the conditions necessary for that purpose can be fulfilled. The post-modernists are right to tell us that the discourse cannot properly aspire to empirical integrity, and they deserve a more substantial response than they have usually received. Ironically, it may be that historians have not been doing justice to their own cause, for it is possible to suggest that a more sustainable concept of objectivity can be attained by freeing ourselves from empirical assumptions. In fact, it may be more efficient to define the discipline from the other direction, that is, as a deductive exercise – taking general analyses, general evidences, general events and general connections as the guiding character of the subject. The particularist focus of empiricism has imposed something of a barrier between the assumptions of scholarship and the deployment of broad, deductive reasoning. In a sense, they have come to be seen

12


as opposites. The historian’s favoured self-image is as an expert in a restricted field of study, carving out “building blocks” of pure knowledge. The implication is that the blocks will simply flip into place, and fit together of their own accord. But this, of course, can never happen in actuality. It creates a structural illusion, like the film of a building demolition run backwards. The past does not reconstitute itself. Any notion of objectivity must take account of that condition. Can we identify an approach that would avoid the mistaken assumption that particulars are going to add up automatically? An alternative balance would pay greater attention to the structures of argument through which cogent and coherent conclusions may be reached. It could be best characterised as a process of reasoned association. We would be asking how connections could be more clearly validated. We would be less inclined to give unquestioned authority to the weight of information, and more inclined to ask whether the conclusions fit with other circumstances. The most distinctive difference would be in the breadth of perspective. Context would be taken in its fullest (and perhaps truest) sense. The frame of reference would not be restricted to what could be presented as detailed and empirical, but would incorporate whatever could be regarded as related to the topic. The assumption would be that coherent judgements are best obtained by embracing an explicitly cohesive or inclusive view. This study seeks to apply and substantiate that approach throughout. It highlights various instances where a restricted focus has produced interpretations noticeably out of line with other general evidence. One example central to the theme is the question of the political inclinations of seventeenth-century towns. Close research on specific urban localities has tended to emphasise the privileged status and conservative mindset of the leading merchant bodies.20 This has become the consensus among historians. It is however in some degree of conflict with the known circumstance that the great majority of substantial towns supported parliament during the Civil War. This is probably as near as we can get to a historical fact – something which is of active and general significance, and which is not really in question. Yet most modern historians have been inclined to deflect the force of it and base their assessment on the particular ways in which towns can be seen as conservative. It illustrates how an empirical position can detract from a coherent view. But to favour a wide lens is not to accept the distinction that is often made between general historical writing and research-based history. It is part of the intention here to challenge that contrast. This volume is indeed not above indulging in a little documentary fetishism on its own


13

account. It seeks to bring to light some important local sources which seemed in danger of going unnoticed. The study only diverges from the academic norm in the weight and precedence that it gives to more general factors. Chapters 2 and 3 offer an example of setting primary research against a background of broad evidence in a way that has not been usual. Here, the specific practical interests and initiatives of the constituencies are looked at in the light of the central development of the concept of sovereign representative legislation. The greatly enhanced technical status of parliamentary law and the greatly increased public demand for it are two of the most undoubted facts of the period. But their logical force has been minimised because they have usually been viewed in distinct compartments. This study takes the position that the significance of these matters can best be seen by elucidating the context that they shared. All in all, we might be advised to put less trust in our building blocks, and consider an alternative construction industry analogy. It may be that the best working basis for historians is a sustained and extended framework of general evidence and associations. It has come to be supposed that the study of the particular is the only legitimate starting point, and that general history is a less authentic medium. It is here proposed that, on the contrary, a general perspective is the most genuine form of academic discipline available in historical discourse. A more inclusive approach can also help to compensate for the inevitable unevenness in documentary survival rates. The problem of the inconsistencies in the range of evidence available shows the fallacy of assuming that a close and narrow focus will produce a true, balanced view. It will be seen, for instance, that little of the early evidence of local parliamentary initiatives comes from Nottinghamshire. This might have various explanations. It might have been because the county had different interests, or chose to pursue them in other ways. But of course it may also be because the kinds of sources from which this information is obtained in the West Country have simply not survived in the Midland county. And in fact this is very often the case. It thus becomes all the more important to include in our account the rather different kind of evidence that does exist – that is, references in central records, and the powerful, general statements later made by leading Nottinghamshire activists and representatives which bear on the same issue, but might not conventionally be considered in the same light. The assumption is then that the full and unfettered use of general, coordinating and comparative perspectives provides the most effective check on the natural partialities of historians and their sources. This may

14


indeed offer a means by which the unavoidable political aspects of the subject can be actively involved in the process of historical reasoning. The identification of bias is usually presented in terms of study skills – encouraging an awareness of factors which may colour our assessment of the past. But this rightly critical stance should not lead us to suppose that there is an ideal, apolitical form of history. The real distortion lies in the concealment of our prejudices. There is no greater misapprehension than the frequently repeated assertion that the problem for historians is how to keep their opinions out of their work. On the contrary, the real problem for historians is how to engage their prejudices in an open and constructive manner. All historical judgements have political implications – that is their essential character. The task is to establish what is positive and plausible in our political relationship with the past. When we hide our opinions behind a claim to empirical rectitude, the exercise is doubly falsified. But if we acknowledge, with true honesty, our position within the discourse, it can only clarify our view of both past and present. Then the subjectivities inherent in historical study might even be brought into some degree of constructive resolution.

Reconnecting Thus one advantage of adopting a more open perspective as the basis of historical objectivity is that it offers ways of dealing with the extra dimensions of the subject, the parts which empiricism fails to reach. For instance, it can at once be indicated how a deductive rather than a particularist approach may enable us to reinvolve the present in the historical equation, while nevertheless providing a clearer view of the historical evidences. Modern historians have been wrong to follow Elton in supposing that by directing ourselves to look at the past “in its own right” and avoid “hindsight” we necessarily obtain an objective view. Carr identified the specific danger of political subjectivity entailed in these empiricist claims. Parallel to this runs a basic, structural flaw. It is, of course, quite impossible to look at the past “in its own right” – because this is precisely what is no longer there. The injunction against hindsight becomes a means of creating the impression of looking at the past “as it was”, by the expedient of ruling out in advance any circumstance that may appear to be forward-looking. For it is in not seeing signs of the future that the empirical illusion is best maintained. This is to artificially discount a perfectly valid category of evidence, which might have real, constructive significance, and is surely the most debilitating error that historians can make. There is a tendency to circumvent the force of


15

such occurrences, and try to explain them away. Chapter 6 of this study describes a particular instance, where the denial of a forward-looking development has created a very misleading view of the past. So the prospect of making history more relevant need not be regarded as a matter of drawing forced analogies between past and present. On the contrary, it may simply be a case of removing the arbitrary hard breaks which have been put in place under the influence of empiricist formulae. A central feature of this volume will be to challenge the various kinds of disconnection which have characterised revisionist history, and of which the dissociation between past and present is one. It should be said that this disjuncture is not restricted to the empiricists. Historians of various persuasions have found it advantageous to isolate “the past” as a convenient means of studying it, even those, like Michel Foucault, with a relatively unconventional view of the academic project. Foucault is in general terms to be numbered among the post-modernists, and would reject empiricism in as far as it involves a claim that the individual consciousness can establish a “truth” from the traces of history. Indeed, he has described more clearly than anyone how the concept of “truth” is in itself a form of power: the way that truth is defined, the very mechanisms and procedures by which it is pursued and sanctioned, inevitably serves the vested interests of status and position in the present. It is “linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces”. There is always, as he says, a “regime of truth”.21 Foucault brings out the full dimensions of subjective authority. But the clear understanding of the connection between discourse and power raises in even more direct form the question of how historians deal with their own very powerful presence in the text. The assumption of empirical objectivity is conclusively denied to us. But Foucault’s own solution also involves in practice an element of attempting the impossible. We can readily applaud his intention to “dispense with the constituent subject, to get rid of the subject itself”.22 But ironically, this determination seems to produce its own very pronounced problems of selectivity. He favours a history of discontinuity, of divisions and limits, of other times, so out of phase as to be almost beyond comprehension. The particular interest of this idea to the study in hand is what it implies for our view of the balance of evidence. In one sense, Foucault is recognising and reflecting what he calls the dispersed or fragmented nature of the historical sources. But in another sense, like the empiricists, he is overlooking the balance. The great bulk of silent, unformed sources, which fill the gaps, and make up the hinterland of history, again seem

16


to go unacknowledged. Foucault uses the idea of separateness to define or select the past. Thus the archive is not to be seen as something which historians can recover for themselves, but rather as the process of its own functioning: “it is that which differentiates discourses and specifies them in their own duration”.23 Similarly, in his work on penal systems he establishes his field of enquiry by tracking back until he finds a context which he can characterise by its sheer unfamiliarity to the present. Foucault has protested against the general perception of him as a historian of discontinuity.24 But he accepts that he is suspicious of “smooth, continuist schemas of development”, and that he prefers to focus on the significance of dramatic “transformations”.25 This study would not necessarily disagree with that position, only with the danger that we end up making arbitrary assumptions of “difference” as a way of separating out the past, and thus artificially preclude the possibility of causative relations between periods. Thus the premise here is that the object or field of historical discipline, seen whole, must necessarily include the present, or the outcomes of the past. The empiricists (and Foucault in his own way) warn that we should not prejudge the past by seeing it as a preparation for what comes next. Yet of course the past is necessarily, in some sense, a preparation for what comes after it. We live today in the constant awareness that what we do now is a preparation for what will follow. Some of us fear that it may not be a very positive kind of preparation, and indeed that it may not lead to much of a future at all. But we know nevertheless that what we are doing, or failing to do now, will have paved the way for it. The course that such sequences took in the past is surely the essential topic of historical study and debate. To begin from the assumption that the past is not a preparation for the present is to deny ourselves the chance to draw rational and useful conclusions from our historical studies. It is also to defy the nature of chronological form. It is indeed another paradox for empiricism that the outcomes of history, or what the past has in fact become, are all that can actually be experienced about it. To this extent, when we deliberately exclude these outcomes from the equation, we reject the only empirical knowledge of the subject that we possess. So how can we use our observations of what has actually happened? What we should not do is simply discount it, in the way that historians often seem to suggest, as if it can only mislead us about the reasons behind it. The nature of outcomes is a vital indicator of the balance of causes, and is often the only available source of light on hidden areas of history. Far from ignoring outcomes, we need to give full weight to their logical force. To take a relevant example, historians


17

have sought to illustrate the pitfalls of hindsight by warning that we should be careful not to suppose that republican sentiment was one of the causes of the Civil War because it emerged during the conflict. It is pointed out that republicanism is not in evidence before the war. On the surface this is true, and seems to present a powerful argument. But of course there are good reasons to suppose that such sentiments may have been submerged. We would hardly have expected to find people holding up banners proclaiming their republican beliefs. In other words, there is a danger of making a negative judgement because the evidence is not accessible. In fact, such developments tend to be submerged in more ways than one. We can never really know what were the deep socio-psychological preconditions that underlay the change in peoples’ beliefs. But the outcome clearly implied a vigorous process of transition, and it is wrong to assume that nothing of the sort was taking place. In this sense, the fact that republican sentiment did appear during the Civil War may after all be a more accurate reflection of its status before the war than the supposition that it was not present in any shape because it was not visible to the naked eye. The following chapters offer various examples of the form that psychological precursors to republicanism might take – that is, the halfway stages between a free monarchy and a republic This kind of analysis may save us from the rather unlikely proposition that these things appear out of nowhere. This is all to say that there is a more open, but connected perspective which makes it possible to take account of (or at least avoid excluding from our account) all the various elements of the historical balance: the present, the documented past and the vast areas which can never be reflected as factual evidence. It enables us to take a view which may be described as organic: or “of the whole”. To suggest a fully integrated concept of history is not to propose eradicating the idea of difference. On the contrary, it may readily be supposed that contrasts will be among the most enlightening aspects of a broad comparative viewpoint. But it may at least avoid the kind of artificial disconnection to which the close focus of empirical practice lends itself. Just as this encouraged the dissociation of past and present, so it helped some historians to isolate the various elements of historical development in the period leading up to the Civil War. Thus, although contemporary commentators often noted the socio-economic aspects of Civil War allegiance, revisionists have specifically tried to exclude them from their analyses of causation. Anthony Fletcher, in his study of seventeenth-century Sussex, noted that Civil War divisions in the county did indeed correlate with differing economic contexts, but he nevertheless chose to assume

18


that the economy was just “the backcloth to the drama of religious and political disruption rather than the substance of the plot”, thus quietly discounting the possibility of a causative connection.26 Here again, the assumption rests on making an arbitrary separation of factors where in reality no line of division can be perceived. Similarly, the two senior revisionists, Geoffrey Elton and Conrad Russell, endeavoured to construct a definition of parliament’s function based on a strict demarcation between the local and national perspectives. They asserted that parliament’s proper role and perceived value was “to transact ordinary, minor public business”, and that this was a different dimension from national politics, in which parliament was not regarded as having any kind of initiating or independent part to play.27 Counter-revisionist historians like Tom Cogswell and Mark Kennedy have looked again at the course of foreign policy in the 1620s and successfully reinstated the traditional view that in this respect people were looking to parliament to take a positive, initiating role in national affairs.28 But they left intact the basic revisionist distinction between the national-political sphere and the local-economic sphere. A more penetrating counter-revisionism is found in the work of historians who have re-affirmed that there is substance in the link between parliamentarian allegiance and a “middling sort” of socio-economic context (again, as suggested by contemporaries), and concluded that this did in some sense make possible the Civil War and English Revolution. Thus local studies by Ann Hughes and Jill Dias have found that popular support for parliament depended on a lively, “industrialising” economic context.29 And recently, Norah Carlin has endorsed social change theory as “an attempt to bring together the different strands of explanation”, echoing Christopher Hill’s thought about the “impossibility of shutting off ‘religious’, ‘constitutional’ and ‘economic’ causes of the Civil War”. Accordingly, she “tends towards one thesis more than any other, that of the importance of the middling-sort as a catalyst which polarised the divisions over religion, politics and government”. Their expanding strength acted as a powerful incentive and rationale for parliamentarianism.30 The present study deals with the same kind of phenomenon from a slightly different angle, and suggests a yet more specific connection between the economic and the political spheres. It is argued below that the general estimation of parliament’s importance grew in line with the local demand for its legislative and regulatory services in social and economic affairs. This can also be characterised as a “middling-sort” perspective, though it could be embraced by all sections of society. It was the basis on which people came to project an enhanced political role


19

for parliament, and it may be seen as the most significant underlying cause of the English Revolution. This is not to propose a crude economic determinism, or reductionism of the kind of which Marxist history has sometimes been accused. To make the perfectly reasonable supposition that economic or geological factors play a fundamental and inescapable role in human affairs is not to say that this dictates a particular course of history. Nor is it to exclude other elements of motivation. The emphasis of twentieth-century philosophy on the field of linguistics has been useful in raising our awareness of the effects of systems of communication, which Marx rather tended to neglect. This study accords a prominent place to the realm of discourse, and perhaps even contributes something to reducing the role of the constituent subject, in favour of a more connected viewpoint. But it does not follow structuralist theory into that inner world where text is everything, and is credited with an internal dynamic so strong as to deny us any power to produce concrete or discrete meaning.31 This volume assumes that, on the contrary, the sense of language, as of history, can be elucidated from the context in which it operates. These pages examine the kind of structures through which the conventional categories of history could be associated. In this instance, the economic and political spheres were linked through a medium of ideas, in which the interplay between parliament’s capacities in both fields was forged and reinforced. The discourse did not necessarily take the form of an explicit “ideology”. It is often supposed that the influence of political consciousness can take place only in the shape of a fully articulated or formally expressed theory. A recent example is found in the revisionist work of Glenn Burgess, who suggests that the Whig interpretation would have required a theory of parliamentary constitutionalism, and then purports to show that such a concept did not exist before the Civil War.32 The demand to see a constitutionalist ideology is in part a failure to engage with the nature of the representative function. Revisionists will sometimes assert that parliament was valued merely as a vehicle for other interests, and not desired constitutionally as an end in itself.33 But of course the potential to act as a vehicle is precisely the essence and strength of a representative institution. And it was naturally in the development of its capacity in that form that parliament’s political importance grew. The finding of this study is that political consciousness operated in a way which was at once more subtle and more direct than an explicit ideology. There was a framework of practical ideas about the nature and capacities of the representative function. At times, representative concepts could indeed appear in association with

20


formally expressed theories about the source of political authority, or commonly received notions about the definition of sovereignty. But they could also take the form of a more immediate, working philosophy based simply on the day-to-day assumptions of ordinary people about their representative rights, and what this meant to them in both economic and political terms. This can be seen in respect of the process of parliamentary legislation. It was in this area that the public demand for parliament’s services was most apparent. All historians recognise that from the mid-sixteenth century, the English political nation developed what may fairly be described as an insatiable appetite for parliament’s legislative service. Statute law was valued because it had a distinctive dual action: it was responsive to local needs and preferences, and yet could offer definitive national judgements. Both of these capacities derived from the representative function of the House of Commons. The localities made their legislative initiatives with a necessary awareness of what it was that gave statute law its unique force. They gave their power of consent, and in return could hope for the provision of binding, sovereign legislation to benefit their interests. This was a context in which parliament’s economic functions could naturally take on a national-political dimension. The revisionists dealt with these possibilities by once again simply interposing a disconnection between the factors in question. They specifically restricted the demand for legislation to a local sphere, as reflecting nothing more than peoples’ pre-occupation with the “bread and butter” issues of particular and private economies.34 The notion has found a surprising degree of acceptance. Derek Hirst, for instance, while confirming that by 1628 parliament was finding a political place in public consciousness, deliberately distinguishes this from the “bread and butter matters of legislation”.35 And David Dean has proclaimed that “a study of legislation is necessarily a revisionist work”, dealing with uncontroversial, day-to-day business.36 It will be suggested below that on the contrary, a study of parliament’s legislative function, roundly perceived, need be anything but a revisionist work. In the period in question, the character of statute law, the public demand for it and the nature of the ideas behind it had the most profound national-political consequences. The importance that people attached to the legislative process could also influence how they regarded the work of government as such. The way that people characterised the activities of government was indeed another kind of practical political idea. The question of what


21

they wanted from government, socially and economically, affected the way that they defined it, just as much as the (associated) question of what powers of regulation they believed it should possess. Most modern historians would probably assume that seventeenth-century government should be seen simply as the (royal) executive, and that the process of legislation, which has now become the most permanent and indispensable tool of government, would not have been regarded in the same light then. It will be suggested in this study, however, that already in the early seventeenth century people were beginning to project the legislative service as a crucial part of the governmental process. This was the measure of the status that the facility had acquired in the public mind, and indicates one important way in which socio-economic requirements could come to entail a political perception. At another level this involves the question of what comprised a “state”. John Pym, in the words of the quotation at the head of Chapter 6 of this study, had come to regard the legislative function as “that which makes and constitutes a kingdom”. It was, in a sense, the service which the kingdom could no longer exist without. This casts an unflattering light on our usual idea of the kind of process that leads to the creation or consolidation of a state structure. It has been a fairly common assumption among historians that in the early modern period the process of state creation would be determined by the strength of bureaucratic organisation from the centre. In that view, the localities, or the people, play a passive or obstructive role. The most extreme version of the theory supposed that a county like Kent was so localist in its identity and administration as to be almost a separate province.37 But in truth this focus does not offer an accurate guide to what was taking place in seventeenth-century England. As Ann Hughes has pointed out, one of the most distinctive features of the English kingdom at this time (and for some centuries past) was that it manifested forms of unity which did not depend on the crude extension of government power.38 This would always have been apparent (and the localist diversion avoided) if historians had taken more care to maintain a comparative perspective with the situation in other European kingdoms, where truly semi-independent provinces did continue to exist in the seventeenth century. In England this was manifestly no longer the case. In fact, we might say that the last time Kent could meaningfully be described as a semi-autonomous political unit was just before the West Saxons conquered it from the Mercians in the ninth century. By the end of the medieval period, the position of parliament as the equal representative of a uniform structure of counties and boroughs made it the symbol and essential basis of

22


centripetal movement. In part then, what is described below is a form of developing political homogeneity that was not essentially a creation of bureaucratic activity from the centre, but was, on the contrary, a process in which initiatives and demands from people in the localities played a full and sometimes leading role. The danger of irreversible diversions is a particular hazard in the context of revisionist-empiricist practice. Notably, in recent years, seventeenth-century historians have become preoccupied with the socalled “problem of multiple kingdoms”. This study would not wish to discourage a focus on societies beyond the “Anglo-Saxon” realm. And in fact the obvious importance of the interaction with Irish and Scottish affairs in the Civil War was given detailed attention by S.R. Gardiner many years ago. But he did not fall into the trap of assuming that in order to give full weight to the Celtic lands they had to be incorporated as a primary cause of the English Civil War. The purpose of later historians in conceptualising a problem of multiple kingdoms was to divert attention from the political challenge that Charles I faced in England. This theory has thrived in part through a displaced political correctness. The genuinely constructive aspects of English parliamentarianism have been neglected, while positive discrimination has been exercised on behalf of the other nations. Many historians seem to have worked on the basis that any Irish or Scottish involvement, however incidental, acquires some magical new significance when hailed as part of the “British Context”. In truth it may be doubted whether there actually were three kingdoms in the sense that could pose a symmetrical problem. Ireland was not an established realm like its neighbours, but a loose assemblage of local powers, subject to varying degrees of colonial intrusion from across the sea. The situation was summed up by the Irish chiefs seeking Habsburg help in Elizabeth’s reign: “Because we have not a king and are divided among ourselves the English attack and rob us daily.”39 The northern kingdom was in a different position, and there are certainly important questions regarding the relationship between the radical challenges that Charles faced in Scotland and England respectively, an issue touched on in Chapter 6 of this study. But the duality of the crown was not in itself the problem. The more significant clues are to be found in distinctive developments within each community. When James I floated the idea of a formal union of the English and Scottish crowns in 1606, it was a limited measure essentially to regularise certain rights which the natives of each kingdom were to hold in the other. James found it easy to obtain approval in the Scottish parliament, over whose deliberations he had effective command. But gaining the


23

support of the English parliament was more problematic. Sir Edwin Sandys, on behalf of the Commons committee, presented the counterproposal of a perfect union. By this, the Scottish legal system would be made subordinate to the English – and brought under one parliament. This certainly reflected a determination that the Scots should not simply be granted free and equal rights in England. But it was also an expression of the special importance that the concept of representative law had acquired for the English parliamentary classes. Sandys spoke lyrically of how the strength of statute law derived from the elected consent of the whole kingdom, and created a public trust. James, however, did not think it necessary (or perhaps desirable) to establish this common system of parliamentary law. He could resolve any anomalies himself, he said, since he supposed that in the final analysis “rex est lex”.40 It was a vital difference of emphasis, and as we shall see, it offers a truer guide to the relative significance of English and “British” affairs in the causes of the Civil War. Sandys was describing a developing unity with a dynamic of its own. The force of this is obscured by the focus on the supposed difficulties of coordinating power in the “British” dimension. We need to ask whether the problem of multiple kingdoms would ever have arisen had it not been required by historians seeking explanations for the crisis that did not involve them in recognising any popular momentum behind the crucial political changes that were taking place within the English kingdom.

2 Legislative Beginnings: 1603–1610

The developing concept of sovereign representative legislation in the sixteenth century. The particular interests of the localities. The peak of legislative activity, 1603–1610. Interruptions: the administrative impasse of 1610. The earliest legislative initiatives which we have to note are ostensibly the most local in character, but they take on a broader significance in the context of the framework of law and representation in which they were made. The technical status of parliament’s legislative function and its value as a socio-economic provision had notably increased during the sixteenth century. And the process had developed in a form which meant that the philosophy behind it was naturally apparent to those who sought to use it. The first case study stems from a problem concerning the almshouse people of Totnes in South Devon. Totnes was not among the larger towns in Devon, though during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries the cloth trade had made it one of the richest commercial centres in the county. In its activities at the end of the sixteenth century it had already shown some degree of consciousness of the public scope of parliament’s legislative role. The general bill to restrict the cloth trade to merchants resident in corporate towns, presented by the city of Exeter in 1581, had actually been suggested to them by the merchants of Totnes, who had further proposed “joining with other cities”.1 Exeter was a centre of much greater wealth and status, and therefore a more effective focus for the measure. But this in itself makes it interesting that Totnes should have seen the advantages and possibilities of coordinating such a move. 24

Legislative Beginnings: 1603–1610

25

By the beginning of the seventeenth century the economy of Totnes was in decline, and its activities as a port were already coming to an end, as the river Dart ceased to be readily navigable that far inland. But despite the contraction in its sources of trade and income, the town apparently retained its interest in parliamentary legislation, though for rather different purposes. In 1606 there was introduced into the House of Commons a bill for “charitable uses”. Although the origins of the bill are not explicitly stated in the sources, there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that it came from Totnes. Letters and papers preserved by the Totnes corporation show that in the early years of the century, the ruling oligarchy faced an embarrassing and persistent challenge to its control of some of the town’s charitable lands. The occupants of the Magdalen almshouses, encouraged by other factions in the town, accused the corporation of misusing revenue from lands supposed to be devoted to the maintenance of the almshouses. They lodged a complaint with the Court of Requests against the corporation’s administration of the charity.2 The court ordered an increase in the financial provision for the almshouse people, but upheld the corporation’s right to administer the charity. The corporation found this outcome broadly acceptable, but the almshouse people were not satisfied, and had not accepted defeat. The corporation attempted to obtain a formal undertaking from them that they would take no further legal proceedings; but another challenge was in fact launched at the Exeter Assizes in April 1602, questioning the judgement of the Court of Requests. The corporation then wrote to the court in London expressing their concern that the matter had been reopened in this way.3 There were two Totnes aldermen who played a particularly prominent role in confronting the challenge from the almshouse people. One was Christopher Brooking, who went to London in 1601 to manage the corporation’s defence in the Court of Requests, and then led the negotiations to try to pre-empt further legal proceedings.4 The other was Walter Dottyn, who attended at the assizes when the almshouse people renewed their attack in 1602.5 These also happened to be the two men chosen by the town as its MPs in 1604. And it seems likely that this was because they were hoping that parliament might help them to deal with the almshouse question. They certainly needed to seek a permanent solution of some kind. The problem had become not only very intractable, but also rather expensive: Brooking had paid out £65 4s. 6d. on the town’s legal defence in 1601,6 and this had failed to bring the issue to a close.

26


That the town had some kind of initiative in hand in the first Jacobean parliament is indicated by an exchange of letters between Brooking and the mayor in 1606. On 26 February the mayor wrote to Brooking in London, acknowledging a letter of the 22nd, and noting, “we perceive of parliament matters little as yet effected”.7 He might, of course, have been referring to general parliament matters, but there was one particular issue before the House in which the Totnes MPs are known to have had a direct interest. This was the bill for the confirmation of lands “heretofore granted or conveyed to several corporations for charitable uses”, which was introduced on 4 March.8 It received its second reading on 19 March, and both Brooking and Dottyn were appointed to the committee.9 This was virtually their only recorded activity in parliament.10 It is thus beyond doubt that Totnes had a special interest in the charitable uses bill. Moreover, the wording (and dating) of the mayor’s letter to Brooking indicates that they had some kind of initiating role in the measure. It seems more than possible that they had brought the bill forward themselves, though undoubtedly they would have tried to place it in a broader context than their own immediate purposes. Certainly there is no more obvious candidate. No other town showed the same specific motivation and close concern for the measure that was displayed by Totnes and its representatives. It must have been a considerable disappointment that the charitable uses bill failed to reach the statute book. Perhaps there was not wide enough sympathy for its aims, and it did not achieve the necessary level of general support. But Totnes had apparently thought it worthwhile to make the effort, no doubt because if it had succeeded, the corporation would have addressed a persistent problem with the kind of definitive legal solution that had not been available from other courts. The larger town of Exeter had retained its status as the leading cloth market in Devon, and had also retained its interest in parliamentary legislation. It had several legislative initiatives to make in the first Jacobean parliament, and like the charitable uses bill, they were ostensibly parochial in character. The first Exeter initiative came in 1607, when the city successfully procured an act to ensure that the privileges of its French company were not prejudiced by a statute which had been passed in the preceding session to guarantee free trade to France, Spain and Portugal.11 In a sense, the Exeter bill was specifically self-centred, but it was nevertheless involved in a very broad economic and political balance. The fact that the city possessed its own French company and thus its own privileged French trade meant that its trading arrangements were in some


27

degree of conflict with those of other Devon towns, most of whom were strongly inclined towards free trade in this respect. Indeed, the “free trade” act of 1606 had been passed at the instigation of West Country interests, notably the merchants of Dartmouth, with the purpose of resisting the monopolising ambitions of London companies.12 The sympathies of the House of Commons at this time were very much with the free traders, and to this extent it is perhaps surprising that the Exeter merchants managed to get their own bill accepted. In fact, the city’s initial attempt to move a proviso to the free trade bill had been swiftly rejected by the House.13 It would be interesting to know in detail how the Exeter representatives managed to recover from this unpromising start and procure an act to protect their own company only a year later. The most likely general explanation is that although Exeter’s position in the “conditions of trade” question put them in a minority among their neighbouring towns and, usually, in the House of Commons, it nevertheless gave them some powerful friends in high places. For instance, the city’s high steward, Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, was not only the principal minister of the crown but also generally in favour of regulated trade. Mainly, of course, he aimed to achieve this through the great merchant bodies of London. In fact, in 1609 he endorsed a proposal for coordinating the whole of the French trade under a London-based company. But it seems that this did not pose too much of a problem for Exeter at this time. The city simply sought an assurance that the privileges of their own company would not be prejudiced.14 It was the other Devon boroughs with a specific preference for “free trade” that expressed outright opposition to the London enterprise. Dartmouth complained that it would result in their trade being squeezed out between Exeter and the capital.15 There was, however, no further legislation on the matter in the first Jacobean parliament. Exeter’s second legislative initiative in this parliament came in 1610, when the city’s representatives sought an act to ratify their construction of a new weir.16 The weir was a vital facility for working the city’s corn and fulling mills. It had replaced the one destroyed by “great and mighty frosts” in the winter of 1608. The problem was that it had proved impossible to reconstruct the weir on the original site, and local landowners had brought or threatened legal actions against the city because the new situation of the weir had caused flooding on their property.17 The corporation therefore instructed their MP, John Prowse, to “attempt by all the means he can to obtain an act of parliament for the settling of the weir where it is”.18 They were apparently unable to

28


defend their corner effectively in the local arena, and they were seeking the ultimate authority of parliamentary statute. The weir bill in fact gave a clearer indication of the kind of central political leverage that the city was able to call upon to get its measures through. The Commons’ committee for the bill was chaired by William Hakewill, one of the most prominent lawyers in the House. He sat for Mitchell in Cornwall, and was closely related to one of Exeter’s leading merchant families. To assist the progress of the bill in the Lords, the corporation wrote specifically to the Earl of Salisbury, to ask him to give the measure his backing if it should reach the Upper House.19 Exeter’s ability to procure two statutes within three years seems to indicate that their central political contacts were systematic and effective. Though no doubt it also owed much to the perception that these provisions were essential for the city’s economy. This was always the vital balance that had to be established. And perhaps the most important “national” implication of the Exeter weir bill was that, rather like the Totnes charitable uses initiative, it indicated how a local community might turn to parliament to provide an unchallengeable legal solution to a specific problem. The corporation’s success in obtaining the weir bill seems to have impressed other groups in Exeter. It apparently encouraged members of the Weaver’s Company to think in terms of seeking parliamentary legislation on their own account. On 25 October 1610, two months after John Prowse returned from parliament with the Exeter weir act (and his bill for expenses, £46 10s. 6d.),20 the weavers made a collection among themselves to send their Master to London to seek “an act of parliament for the good of the company”. No further details are known, and no such initiative reached the parliamentary records. But the company’s historian, Beatrix Cresswell, has made a plausible suggestion about the motivation behind the attempt, and it has a very familiar ring. She believes that the company took this initiative because they were worried that their charter was vulnerable to challenges in the courts.21 This would certainly explain why the weavers might have regarded the weir bill as a good model for action. They were unlucky in their timing, for in early December, the 1603–1610 parliament came to an end. There were initiatives from other localities also which failed to reach the statute book, but did at least reach the floor of the House of Commons. One was a private bill from Cutton in Devon. “For converting the manor and prebend of Cutton to the maintenance of a free school.”22 Cutton formed part of the living of the collegiate chapel associated with Exeter Castle. The proposal was probably connected with the long-term


29

ambition of the Exeter merchants to set up a new free school as an alternative to the present one, which was under the auspices of the Dean and Chapter. The project would reappear in the parliamentary arena in 1624. Parliamentary statute was a favoured means of gaining the authority and legal basis for these new community establishments. There was also another kind of private bill presented by George Luttrell, the lord of Dunster Castle in Somerset. It was called the Minehead Harbour bill, and sought statutory authority for duties to be levied on shipping for the use of the new harbour that Luttrell was proposing to build at the little port of Minehead, a few miles from Dunster. An important factor was the history of tension between Luttrell and the local authorities in the town. There was strong opposition to his persistent attempts to dominate Minehead’s political and economic life. Luttrell, for his part, no doubt believed that the provision of a statute would be the most effective way to circumvent any possible objections.23 But in this instance parliament withheld its support. These bills failed to become law, and despite the high level of productivity of this parliament, this seems indeed to have been the fate of most legislative initiatives at the time. Unsatisfied demand was the real measure of the importance of the process. There was, however, one other West Country proposal that did succeed in the first Jacobean parliament, and seems to sum up the advantages that were on offer. In 1604 there was an act for the relief of fishermen in Devon, Somerset and Cornwall. This was obviously a regional measure, and it is not clear by what specific local agency it was introduced. But the very lack of precise origins indicates the kind of coordination and inter-communication that these measures usually entailed. And the fishing bill was looking to parliamentary legislation for the same reason and the same sort of solution as the other initiatives already described. It was addressing the problem that the “baulkers” and “condors”, whose job it was to go up on the cliffs to watch for the shoals of herring and pilchards, were being impeded in their task by local landowners, who were bringing actions for trespass, both in the local courts and in London. The fishermen’s act therefore sought to provide the baulkers with some in-built protection against these “malicious suits”. The act made guiding lawful at the appropriate times, and provided for a plea of not guilty and damages for wrongful vexation.24 The fishermen now had the highest level of security for their activities. This statute is a particularly good illustration of what these local interests could hope to gain by seeking parliamentary legislation. They would acquire the nearest thing to a definitive solution to their

30


problems – a legal guarantee that was not really available from any other source. It was not a coincidence that these communities were often acting specifically on the basis that the protection of parliamentary statute would secure them against challenges in other courts. And the crucial inference is that this would seem necessarily to imply some degree of awareness that parliament was uniquely qualified to provide such remedies. It indicates that these legislative initiatives reflected something rather more than a purely localist view of the representative institution. This suggestion does not depend entirely on the character of the initiatives as described above. There was a real sense in which an awareness of the unique force of statute law was inherent in the nature of the process of parliamentary legislation, as it had developed since the middle of the sixteenth century. The general “popularisation” of the idea of law and legal action in the sixteenth century is well known. The expanded use of the legal system has rightly been described as one of the ways in which English social and administrative structures were becoming more centralised during that time.25 And we have seen how local landowners, and even almshouse people in the West Country, showed no compunction about taking recourse to law, both in the local courts and in London. In response, the boroughs and the other interests under challenge were able to take advantage of the most striking development of all in sixteenthcentury law – that is, the new level of supremacy acquired by parliamentary statute. The fact was that parliament had become the trump card in the legal game. This has been convincingly described as the “triumph of parliamentary law”. Parliament had for many centuries been the most important court in which the law of the land was declared. But during the mid-sixteenth century, when the representative institution was employed to enact the separation from the Church of Rome, parliamentary statute acquired a new kind of sovereign force. Geoffrey Elton, in his less revisionist guise, has argued powerfully that this was the time when the authority of parliamentary law became supreme and omnicompetent. After the Reformation Parliament, statute law was no longer limited by the idea of a higher “natural law”, or by the immunities of other legal systems like canon law and customary law. Consequently, parliament ceased to be just the High Court of the King, and became an equal partner in a sovereign, law-making body, thereafter referred to as the “King-in-Parliament”.26 Nothing was now beyond the provisions of parliamentary law, and nothing could alter those provisions except parliament.


31

The role of the House of Commons in this arrangement was crucial because the absolute universal authority of parliamentary law derived essentially from the concept of elected representation. This idea had become steadily more explicit in political consciousness as the sixteenth century progressed. Sir John Fortescue, at the end of the fifteenth century, had expressed the notion that in England the king made the laws by consent. But Fortescue did not elaborate the concept of representation, nor did he place great emphasis on the position of parliament. It was in 1523 that Christopher St German began to enunciate the basis on which the idea of consent was going to develop into a fully fledged concept of legislative sovereignty. Discussing what gave parliament the right to legislate against the liberties of the church, he suggested, It cannot be thought that a statute that is made by the authority of the whole realm as well of the King and of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal as well as of all the Commons will recite a thing against the truth.27 This idea that the expressed opinion of the whole realm created an autonomous moral authority was to prove the crucial weapon in the king’s fight to free himself from the grip of the Church of Rome. And in 1631, as one of Henry’s pamphleteers, St German produced some New Additions to his treatise, spelling it out in terms of sovereignty: “the king in his parliament is the high sovereign over the people, which hath not only charge over the bodies, but also over the souls of his subjects”.28 It was this same assumption of moral autonomy that underpinned the transformation of parliamentary law into an omni-competent sovereign force. Statutes made in parliament were binding upon everyone because everyone was theoretically represented in their making, and thus could be deemed to have consented to what was being done in their name. This was the basis on which the overarching authority of the Church of Rome was rejected and a concept of sovereign national positive law established. The importance of the new emphasis on the idea of representation was marked not only by the elevation of parliament in the law-making process, but also by the promotion of the House of Commons within the process. Until the 1530s the Commons had been thought of as merely petitioners for legislation, and the legislating bodies proper were the Lords and the king. But from that time onwards the Commons became an equal partner in law-making procedure. Bills could now take their course in an undifferentiated manner in either House.

32


The elevation of the representative concept did not stop there. The most important and radical implication was the link that developed between representation and “absolute” sovereignty. The omni-competent force of statute law soon began to acquire a notable and paradoxical association with absolute political power. In part, this arose by accident, by conflation with the widely influential work of Jean Bodin. In the 1560s, Bodin produced the first explicit formulation of “absolute” sovereignty, as an antidote to the chronic disorder then prevailing in France. He wanted to define sovereignty as indivisible, and to exclude rather than encourage representative rights. But he gave pride of place to legislative power in reinforcing the concept of sovereignty. The “principal mark the first attribute of the sovereign prince is the power to make law binding on all his subjects in general and to each in particular”. He might have been describing the newly comprehensive scope of statute law in England; except that for Bodin the power was to be exercised “without consent”. It was a logical position. He seems to have been unaware that it was contradicted by developments in England, where consent had become the essence of sovereign law.29 So in the English context, Bodin’s theory had a rather unintended effect. The logic of events was indeed already creating a contrasting definition of absolute sovereignty, similar only in the fact that the principal point of reference was legislative power. In the 1530s, the character of church and state had been completely reordered by the representative authority of parliament. The settlement of the church at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign confirmed that authority. These developments produced the characteristic view of Sir Thomas Smith in 1565: The most high and absolute power of the realm of England is in the Parliament That is the Princes and the whole realms deed That what is done by this consent is called firm, stable and sanctum and is taken for law For every Englishman is intended to be there present, either in person or by procuration from the Prince to the lowest person in England. And the consent of the parliament is taken to be every man’s consent.30 It has often been rightly pointed out that Smith was not intending to draw a line of dispute between king and parliament. But this should not be allowed to obscure the radical implications of the formula he was presenting. The monarch was of course still vital to the legislative equation, but in a sense no longer the crux of it. In an extraordinary way “the lowest person in England” had become the symbol of a highly charged


33

connection between representation and sovereignty. If this paradoxical link held firm, it carried an obvious potential for the further development of parliament. The general reception of the idea among the parliamentary classes was illustrated in the first Jacobean parliament. Sir Edwin Sandys, discussing the problems of achieving unity between the English and Scottish legal systems in the Commons in 1606, noted that “It is fit and just that every man do join in making that which shall bind and govern him, and because every man cannot be present, a representative body is used to perform the same.”31 Four years later James Whitelocke, in the attack on prerogative impositions, made his well-known statement of the idea that since the king could only legislate and raise taxes in parliament, he was more “absolute” within parliament than without it.32 We will find all these threads neatly drawn together by William Pierrepont in the Long Parliament in July 1641, in his speech against Ship Money: “Unlimited power must be in some, to make and repeal laws to fit the dispositions of times and persons – nature places this in common consent only, and where all cannot conveniently meet, instructeth them to give their consents to some they know or believe so well of as to be bound by what they agree on.”33 The quotation is anticipated now because it illustrates so clearly how an awareness of the theory of representative sovereignty would necessarily extend to the political nation at large. Just as people knew why they were obliged to pay parliamentary taxes, so people knew why they were obliged to obey parliamentary laws. A sense of the “absolute” obligation created by universal consent was built into the concept. It was in the light of this that the localities made their legislative initiatives. Elton recognised part of the consequence of this development – that henceforth any local group or individual seeking an “irrefutable” solution to their problems would naturally turn to parliamentary legislation. He also recognised that people did indeed seek to take advantage of this, and that the demand for legislation, both from private individuals and broader communities, grew to a volume far too great for parliament to satisfy.34 The first Jacobean parliament, sitting most years between 1603 and 1610, came as close to it as was possible in the circumstances of the time. Ninety-seven public bills and 130 private bills reached the statute book during those years, and as indicated above, there were also many that did not, plus many putative initiatives that did not even come up for consideration, and no doubt many others of which we know nothing at all.

34


The existence of the public demand for parliamentary legislation is therefore not in doubt. But its significance has perhaps not been fully recognised. One of the great fault lines in current historiographical logic is that when Elton came to write about the later sixteenth century, approaching closer to the political maelstrom of the Civil War controversy, he took a more revisionist line than in his earlier work, and this seems to have prevented him from acknowledging the full implications of “the triumph of parliamentary law”. Thus, in his study of the Elizabethan period, the new and explicitly national scope of statute law was obscured, and Elton was happy to suppose that the popularity of the process of legislation merely confirmed that in the decades before the Civil War, parliament was viewed in a localist or apolitical perspective.35 The present study draws the opposite conclusion. If localities and individuals were seeking parliamentary legislation as the one “irrefutable” or definitive solution to their problems, then clearly the demand for legislation, even at its most minor and local, would naturally entail a perception of parliament as a unique national centre. This was suggested by the local legislative initiatives already described and the analysis of the nature of the concept. We will find it reflected in other aspects of the relationship between these localities and parliament in later chapters. But there was also another important way in which statute law was becoming more central to people’s lives in the second half of the sixteenth century. The extraordinary programme of legislation which created an independent national church and an autonomous lawmaking power was accompanied by an unprecedented flurry of similar activity in the socio-economic field. During the 1530s, the government of Thomas Cromwell instituted a new level of intervention in these areas, and the chosen instrument was parliamentary statute. As Geoffrey Elton (back again in his pre-revisionist mood) has said, Even where the precedents encouraged the use of edicts such as court orders or proclamations, Cromwell preferred the permanence and legalism of parliamentary legislation, despite the enormous difficulties occasioned by the need to persuade both Lords and Commons.36 A flavour of the kind of measure involved can be given in two examples from the most successful area of intervention – the encouragement of trade and manufacture. The growth of a native linen industry, for instance, was promoted by a statute compelling farmers to sow a quarter acre of flax for every 60 acres of arable they possessed. The scheme was


35

broadly accepted and had some success. But the most important area of manufacture was, of course, cloth. A series of statutes was introduced to outlaw the various fraudulent and imperfect practices which in the past had done considerable harm to the reputation and marketability of English cloth. Thus in 1536, the government accepted a merchants’ bill which fixed a new standard size for cloth.37 Again, in general terms, these measures seem to have worked, since the period witnessed a notable expansion in this vital national manufacture. The matter of “quality control” in the cloth industry became, as we shall see, one of the most regular subjects of West Country legislative initiatives. It should be said that the issue of cloth regulation has sometimes had less positive connotations for historians, and has been seen as a kind of restrictive practice by urban merchant oligarchies obstructing the development of rural industry.38 The present author shares the view that the putting-out system of manufacture represented an important stage in the development of capitalist forms of production. But it is not the focus of these pages to investigate the complex and sometimes contradictory question of how far the merchant class aided or impeded that process.39 Quality control was not in any case the most controversial form of limitation on rural industry. In fact there seems to have been broad acknowledgement, certainly at a parliamentary level, that it was a necessary and successful means of encouraging trade. This study looks at these issues principally as core economic concerns that the parties involved became used to dealing with most usually and effectively through parliamentary legislation. We are interested mainly in the significance that this had in enhancing the profile of parliamentary law as the arbiter of socio-economic regulation. Although we should not pretend that the representative process was (or ever will be) truly equitable, it was nevertheless the definitive forum and occasion when all interests could be most freely assembled, voiced and balanced out. The procedures of parliamentary law-making were available and responsive to all elements in the cloth industry equation. The 1536 act, for instance, was held back for a time, while producers reequipped to enable them to meet the new standards.40 In 1555 a new statute restricted the number of looms that could be used in one operation, to protect “poor artificers” against the engrossing ambitions of “rich and wealthy clothiers”.41 In 1566, parliament was to be found holding the ring between the rival claims of the Clothworkers’ Company and the Merchant Taylors.42 And in 1604 the less powerful elements among the London felt-makers, working on the fringes of the Haberdasher’s Company, successfully obtained an act of parliament to protect

36


themselves against the merchant wholesalers who were undermining their trade by marketing unfinished goods.43 This encapsulates the vitality of the process. And just as the writings of Sir Thomas Smith had noted the arrival of the concept of sovereign, representative legislation, so they marked the important change from a traditional culture which saw socio-economic matters as a static area governed by custom and morality, to a culture which viewed the socioeconomic sphere in a much more dynamic light – as a field for action, where pragmatic legislative remedies were attempted for problems as they arose.44 Thus statute law became ever more central to people’s lives, as the determining factor in the ground rules which governed their everyday activities. And as it was an ever-changing dynamic, one consequence was that magistrates and other local authorities and their representatives had a growing need for a specific record of precisely what the statutes said at any given time. Relating this to the localities on which this study focuses, there was a particular example in the activities of the representatives of the little Somerset port of Bridgewater in the first Jacobean parliament. Bridgewater Corporation’s receiver’s accounts for 1606 include a payment “for writing the bill for the statute of labourers”.45 It is unlikely that Bridgewater Corporation was preparing its own legislative initiative on this matter, but the statutes of labourers were certainly of special interest to the town. Bridgewater’s charter contained a clause outlining the corporation’s responsibility for implementing the legislation on this issue.46 And this provides the clue to the town’s interest in the matter in 1606. The preceding session in 1604 had passed a statute to “explain” the statute of 1563 which defined the power of magistrates in counties and towns to set wages of labourers.47 The act of 1604 clarified and reinforced this authority, confirming that it could be exercised without the endorsement of the Court of Chancery, and that it applied to all types of workmen and workwomen whatsoever. It seems that in 1606, Bridgewater Corporation decided that it needed a copy of this latest statute of labourers. The same kind of concern also appeared in a more general form in the activities of Walter Yonge, of Honiton in Devon. Yonge was from a merchant family which was just entering the fringes of the gentry. He was a Puritan, and is mainly known for his diaries recording the development of opposition to the policies of the royal government across the whole field of public affairs between 1604 and 1645. The diaries show a particular interest in parliament’s legislative work right from the beginning. In 1606, though not yet an MP, he had sufficient awareness of the


37

matter to note some of the bills that had been brought forward in the Commons.48 Most substantially, Yonge was among the first to compile a manual of the long list of parliamentary statutes which governed the work and powers of the Justices of the Peace (JPs).49 Yonge was a qualified lawyer, and after inheriting the family estates in 1612, he became active as a local magistrate in Devon. This was the combination of skills and interests which inspired him to produce his reference book to assist the work of JPs – a detailed guide to the relevant statutes and their provisions. He itemised the number of JPs required to sit, and the level of evidence and the penalties stipulated for each offence. In the course of the sixteenth century, JPs had become the principal agents of law and administration in the localities. Their authority was based quite simply on the application of statutes, literally hundreds of which were now, it was said, stacked upon their shoulders. Along with their obvious concern with matters of public order, the JPs also dealt with economic affairs. As we have seen, the Bridgewater magistrates were particularly exercised about the question of setting labourers wages. The JPs were also involved with maintaining fair market conditions (against “forestalling” and “engrossing”) and regulating apprenticeships. Yonge’s formal guide to their powers was another illustration of the way that an awareness of parliamentary law was becoming central to socio-economic regulation. It was the most crucial aid to the work of those who now effectively governed the localities. And it is just one indication of the special interest and expertise that, as we shall see, Walter Yonge displayed in both the practice and principle of statute. It is clear enough that in all these ways the provision of parliamentary law had acquired a new level of significance by the beginning of the seventeenth century. This was the background to the high level of legislative activity in 1603–1610. But at the end of that parliament, this process suffered a considerable practical setback. In that year, the intractable disagreements which emerged between king and Commons, about methods of government finance, contributed to a persistent souring of relations. Parliamentary sessions became less frequent and shorter. This in turn meant that the windows of opportunity for legislative initiatives were all but closed. It would be some years before the possible political implications of these frustrations became apparent, and these aspects will be discussed in later chapters. But already in 1610, the dispute between crown and parliament, and especially the controversy over impositions, showed another side of the concern of these communities for representative rights, and placed it in a constitutional dimension.

3 The Constitutional Dimension

The “simple handicrafts men” of Minehead, and their fight for political rights If localities did indeed recognise parliament’s unique capacity to provide legislative solutions to their problems, and the centrality of statute law to the regulations which governed their activities, then we might also expect them to show an awareness of the importance of the representative rights which gave them some influence over these matters, and from which the authority of parliamentary law derived. The West Country boroughs certainly did display such an awareness, in various ways. At the most basic level it might manifest itself as a simple determination to maintain a parliamentary franchise. This was in fact the case with the borough of Minehead in Somerset in the early seventeenth century. The story is notable precisely because of the lowly socio-economic position of the town. Minehead was a tiny trading community, smaller than any that have been dealt with above, and on the face of it possessed neither the wealth or substance, or the means of influence, to use the parliamentary system to its advantage. Yet, somehow and for some reason, it fought doggedly to hang on to its representation. Minehead barely managed to maintain the status of an exporter at all. The tiny port dealt mainly with Wales and Ireland, in basic commodities such as beans and fish. In Elizabethan times it developed a limited export trade to the Iberian Peninsula, sending out beans and small parcels of cloth in return for salt. This trade was, in any case, subject to disruption during the hostilities with Spain which came to characterise the period. The town also had difficulties with another external force – the local lords of the manor, the Luttrell family of nearby Dunster Castle. 38

The Constitutional Dimension

39

Minehead’s relationship with the Luttrells tended to be competitive rather than cooperative. At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, apparently at the time of greatest confidence in the stability and substance of their trade across the Bristol Channel, Minehead had acquired a charter of incorporation, which gave it an independent municipal government. This was achieved without the endorsement of the Luttrells, and to some extent freed the town from their influence. But the charter was granted on condition that the harbour be kept in good repair, and circumstances conspired to make this problematic. By the middle of the sixteenth century, receding water levels and the accumulation of stones on the harbour bed were already making the berth too shallow for the larger ships that had once docked there. By the end of the century the harbour was of limited use. In 1601, at George Luttrell’s instigation, a royal commission was set up to inquire whether the harbour was being maintained to an adequate standard.1 The burgesses did not surrender their authority without a struggle. Although they could not deny the decline of the harbour, they claimed that the disruption of trade had so reduced their income that they had been unable to carry out remedial work.2 This did little to help their case. Luttrell asserted that the town council was clearly incapable of fulfilling the duties laid upon it. He suggested that Minehead had been better governed and the harbour better maintained before the town was given its independence, and that this failure was hardly surprising, since the burgesses of the council were “simple handicrafts men, who are better to be governed than to govern others”. He added that the town had no lands or other such income with which to support its corporate status.3 Luttrell was not motivated simply by a desire to dominate. The harbour was important to the area. The township of Dunster itself was of a similar size to Minehead (at about 1000 inhabitants) and possessed a more significant basis of cloth manufacture, which looked to Minehead for an outlet. The inquiry upheld Luttrell’s position and concluded that the town had failed to keep the facility in good repair. In 1604 the charter was abrogated and the town council dissolved. It seemed that the town had lost out in its struggle for political independence. Luttrell’s lordship was reinstated, and he had the resources to sustain it. Ironically, there was a noticeable improvement in trade with the arrival of peace with Spain in 1604, and the port books show increased activity for almost a decade.4 But Luttrell now had the initiative, and took it upon himself to build a new and larger harbour, where the shoreline had greater natural depth.5 He still struggled, however, to achieve cooperation. In October 1609 he wrote to 40 of his neighbours,

40


inviting them to a dinner at which they would be asked to contribute to the cost of completing the harbour. He might have done better to withhold the request until they had been made amenable by his hospitality – he received only five promises of attendance.6 When he turned to parliament for assistance in 1610, it was similarly unproductive. His “Minehead Harbour bill”, which sought to defuse opposition by obtaining statutory authority for duties to be levied on shipping for the use of the harbour, failed to reach the statute book.7 But Luttrell did not lack determination. He resorted to more ancient forms of obligation, and asserted a right to levy the duties as lord of the manor. The new harbour was completed and seems to have served its purpose. Although trade dipped again in the mid-1610s, it then revived, and by the 1620s the port books show activity at a much more substantial level.8 With the import of Irish wool, Minehead became a centre for wool distribution. This encouraged local cloth manufacture, and for the first time there is regular mention of “Minehead Dozens” being exported to the Bay of Biscay. It seemed that Minehead had gained a certain amount of prosperity, at the cost of its political independence. But in fact the town had not quite given up in that respect. They were still prepared to fight for their right to the parliamentary franchise, and in this arena the battle with Luttrell was much more even. When the town returned MPs to parliament in 1621, it was somewhat controversial, since they had not returned anyone in 1614. Luttrell at once tried to get the 1621 return declared void. He petitioned the House of Commons with a protest that the franchise had depended on the charter, which had now been declared forfeit.9 But this time there was a weakness in Luttrell’s case: there was no direct proof that the franchise did in fact depend on the charter. He could only point to the circumstantial evidence that the town had returned no members before 1563 and none since 1604. Minehead had been fortunate to find two MPs who were willing and able to put their case. They showed a good understanding of the way that the parliamentary system worked, and the kind of considerations that were likely to carry weight with the House. As regards the town’s failure to return members in 1614, they claimed that in fact an election had been held, but that Luttrell had prevented the return by intercepting the indentures: “and the parliament breaking up so suddenly, the town had no time to right itself”.10 In the light of Luttrell’s conspicuously high-handed attitude to the town’s activities, this claim sounded quite plausible. And at a time when the Commons were sensitive to any


41

hint of an attempt to disrupt the free process of elections, this was an important seed of doubt that would count against Luttrell. The town’s representatives exploited the other weakness in Luttrell’s claims with a similarly sure touch. They emphasised the fact that there was no explicit connection between the charter and the franchise, and suggested that it was “unlikely the Parliament would admit them upon that without some other matter”.11 This was a good logical basis for their argument, and they were no doubt gratified by Sir Edward Coke’s opinion that a franchise need not depend on a charter or patent, but might be validated by prescription or custom. But they were left with the problem that in order to prove this, they really needed to demonstrate that they had in fact exercised franchise rights before 1563. The House allowed them time to search the parliamentary records for evidence to show to the committee of privileges.12 We know of the inquiry made at the instigation of Sir Robert Lloyd (als. Fludd), one of the town’s MPs. This revealed that Minehead’s returns had been questioned in the Commons in 1563, when it was named among a group of boroughs which had “not lately returned in Chancery”. On balance, this was not particularly encouraging from the town’s point of view, though the searcher tried to gloss it to their advantage by noting that Minehead must have given satisfaction in this respect, for the town’s burgesses continued to serve in the House and were not challenged in the succeeding assembly.13 But Sir George Moore, chairing the committee of privileges, was so far not convinced. When he reported to the House on 3 March he issued a warning that unless the town could produce more positive evidence of franchise rights, their election would be declared void. He noted that they had asked for more time, but he was doubtful whether there was much point in granting it.14 However, the town’s representatives were not ready to give up. Lloyd made a direct appeal to the House for “liberty till Tuesday next, and then to be heard by his counsel”. The House agreed, but stressed that there was to be no further leeway.15 The situation looked distinctly unhopeful at this point. But then they had their best idea. They switched their focus to the lacunae in the parliamentary records, which needless to say offered great scope. Lloyd was able to show that “from Ed. 4th time till 33 Henry 8th no records of this kept; and from 33 Henry 8th ill kept”. He asserted that the records were so inadequate that the issue could not be determined either way. He concluded that in fact it was, coincidentally, only in 1563 that the keeping of records became reliable!16 This assertion alone would probably not have done the trick. But crucially, Minehead’s representatives

42


now began to put their case in the context of other boroughs for which the inadequacy of the records might also prove an embarrassment. It was almost certainly this that swayed the committee. When Sir George Moore made his final report on the matter on 16 March, he found in favour of the town, and he named three factors that had counted with him most heavily. First, the committee had accepted that Minehead’s franchise did not rest on the charter, which had been concerned to provide the town with a municipal government, “for the maintenance of the harbour only”. Secondly, the committee acknowledged that “the neglect there hath been of keeping of records” could indeed make it impossible to demonstrate that a franchise was held by prescription. Thirdly, they had been obliged to recognise that “there are thirty other ancient borough towns (which were named to the committee) for which there are no records extant to prove they have sent burgesses to Parliament”.17 This was the most telling point. The town had put their case in a context which the House could not afford to ignore. Minehead had won through. But there was one more round yet to be fought. Their MP Lloyd was not without his own failings in parliamentary eyes. On 7 May 1621, he was expelled as a monopolist, and a motion was made to send out a writ for a by-election for Minehead. Luttrell, rather unwisely, seized on this as an opportunity to renew his petition against Minehead’s franchise. The move was swiftly sat upon by some of the most weighty figures in the House. John Pym and John Glanville simply reiterated the reasons which had determined the decision in favour of the town. Sir George Moore muttered darkly about his suspicions that the town had been hampered in the presentation of its case “because their records have been imbezzled”.18 There is no doubt that the impression that Luttrell gave of being prepared to do absolutely anything to deprive the town of its political rights had done much to turn the House against him. On 12 May, William Noy and Sir Edwin Sandys settled the matter once and for all, by advising the House not to hear Luttrell’s counsel and “not to hear Mr. Luttrell for his own right”.19 There is a sense of the House defending representative rights against lordly authority. The returns survived for the elections of 1624 and 1626, reflecting the fact that the dispute was over. The indentures now assumed a settled form. They were made out between the sheriff of Somerset on the one part, and the constables, burgesses and inhabitants of Minehead on the other. Each indenture was witnessed by ten “burgesses and inhabitants”. And the election was said to have been carried out in “public and open assembly in the presence of divers others the burgesses and


43

inhabitants of the said borough with a free and voluntary consent”.20 We should neither overestimate nor underestimate the degree of democracy involved in this. There was real provision for the choices to be put to the “inferior” burgesses, probably numbering about 50. But this popular input could doubtless be evaded or manipulated, and Minehead was not in any case a big enough borough to insist on electing people from among its own community. Nevertheless, the town had clearly in some sense asserted its parliamentary liberties. It is a very striking example of a tiny trading borough which obviously felt quite powerfully that its interests would be served by continued parliamentary representation, just as it had felt that it merited a municipal government. The town’s political horizons were both local and national. The “simple handicrafts men” of Minehead had clung on to their representative rights in rather unpromising circumstances, showing great determination and some awareness of the nature of the parliamentary process.

Dartmouth and Nottingham and the defence of free elections The Minehead story illustrates the most basic way in which a concern for parliamentary rights can be measured. In other boroughs, a “constitutional” perception of parliament and its powers was rather more explicit. And as far as the West Country was concerned, this was particularly notable in the town of Dartmouth. It was a small port, though not quite as small as Minehead, and certainly trading at a very different level. In fact, in the early seventeenth century, Dartmouth was one of the most thriving maritime centres in the kingdom, largely by virtue of its substantial stake in the flourishing Newfoundland cod trade. Dartmouth was very lucky in the convenience of its harbour. The steeply sloping hills behind the town may have made inland transport even more problematic than usual and deprived the port of a hinterland, but the same configuration also provided it with a magnificent deep anchorage. The Dart was one of the few navigable rivers in the South West whose entrance was not becoming blocked by silting.21 The problems of maintenance were therefore much less than at Minehead. It was only the increasing volume of trade that induced Dartmouth to seek to extend its quay facilities. Dartmouth Corporation displayed a close concern with the activities of the first Jacobean parliament, and showed a strong awareness of the importance of representative concepts in helping it to protect its economic position. It was not only involved in legislative initiatives

44


like Exeter and Totnes, but also with issues that were more immediately public and constitutional in character. Dartmouth Corporation preserved a substantial set of records from this assembly, which show that they were very aware of the importance of parliament’s political position, and its significance for the advancement of their economic interests. It is already recognised that the townsmen MPs of Dartmouth were a notably bold presence in the Commons in later parliaments, especially in the context of the wartime crises of the late 1620s, when, as will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter, they had very strongly expressed opinions about trade and foreign policy frequently at odds with those of the royal government. Exeter and Bristol Corporations also preserved a parliamentary record of the constitutional crisis that resulted from the strains of war and war finance. Historians have sometimes tended to suppose that it was only the special circumstances of the 1620s that induced local communities to view parliament in a national perspective. A study of Exeter, for instance, has argued that until the 1620s, the city perceived the representative assembly in a purely localist dimension, as just one of a variety of centres of power through which specific parochial interests could be advanced.22 And by the same token a thesis about Devon and Parliament under the early Stuarts has concluded somewhat peremptorily that the Devon representatives took little interest in national issues in the first decade of the century.23 Such a view does much less than justice to the horizons of the West Country boroughs in the first Jacobean parliament. It has already been suggested above that the standard legislative service that these communities sought from parliament naturally implied an awareness of the institution as a uniquely powerful legal authority. The documents preserved by Dartmouth Corporation from the parliament of 1604–1610 show that in fact these towns were very much involved in the political questions of the time, and did not require the general politicisation of the 1620s to awake their constitutional consciousness. The Dartmouth collection shows a merchant community taking a constitutional interest in their representative institution simply because of its significance for their own, ordinary, day-to-day affairs. Dartmouth preserved documents from two periods of activity in the first Jacobean parliament – the controversy over the Buckinghamshire election in 1604, and the dispute over impositions in 1610. These were the moments of greatest tension between king and Commons in this parliament. In each case the king attempted to stop the House from


45

dealing with matters which he considered to be beyond their powers or purview. In 1604 he told them it was not their province to judge election disputes. In 1610 he told them that it was not their place to discuss the legality of impositions levied by prerogative. In each case the Commons stood firm, and asserted an independent right to deal with the matters in question. On each occasion Dartmouth Corporation preserved a copy of the Commons’ formal statement of this right. In 1610 they also preserved a record of the great debate on impositions which ensued when the king gave way. These were matters of considerable political import, but related directly to Dartmouth’s local and economic interests. The dispute which led to the first of these Commons’ statements began on the very first day of business in 1604, when the House confronted an electoral judgement of the court of Chancery. The court had annulled the election of Sir Francis Goodwin on the basis that he was an outlaw, and endorsed in his place the person whom he had defeated at the poll, the Privy Councillor Sir Edward Fortescue. The Commons promptly reinstated Goodwin and declared that their own House was the proper judge of these issues. On 29 March the king intervened and declared that although he had no direct interest in the election of Fortescue, the court of Chancery was entirely within its rights, because electoral disputes were the proper province of the court into which the writs were returned. James had characteristically (and quite correctly) detected an underlying claim to autonomous jurisdiction in the Commons’ position, and he took the opportunity to inform them that their privileges were held by grace from the crown, and not by independent right.24 The Commons stood their ground, and on 3 April sent the king their “Humble Answer”. In truth, it was humble only in the sense of begging to differ. They simply reaffirmed and justified the position they had adopted from the start. And this was the statement of which Dartmouth Corporation acquired a copy.25 It was a full and fair copy exactly as it appeared in the Commons Journal.26 It was a very assertive statement, but did not have much to offer in the way of precedent to support its claims. True, it referred grandly to the existence of many precedents, but it then failed to cite them: “wherewith we spare to trouble your majesty”. The few precedents which were actually cited came from late Elizabethan parliaments, and these showed merely that by that time the Commons had already begun to claim a right to judge election disputes, not that they already possessed it.27 The real force of the Commons’ position lay in representative logic: partly in their argument that the returns should be dealt with in the place which

46


saw “the appearance and service of the writ”; but mainly in their belief that their control over election disputes was vital in order to ensure that elections, and parliaments, remained free. As Henry Yelverton pointed out in the House, if the court of Chancery were allowed discretion to alter election results, “a chancellor may call a parliament of what persons he will”.28 This of course must always have been the case in theory. It was only now that the Commons were becoming sensitive to it. The king was well within his rights to reject the Commons’ stance, and his initial response to the “Humble Answer” was to repeat the position in law and insist upon obedience. But in the end, for no obvious reason (except perhaps the most obvious one of all – that is to avoid getting off on the wrong foot with his principal source of extra money) he offered the compromise solution of a new election. At the time perhaps, the outcome was a little disappointing to some MPs, because they had failed to win simple acknowledgement of a sole right to judge election disputes. But as it turned out, they had won a notable victory, for in practice their right to act as a court of record in this matter, and thus their authority over election disputes was not challenged again.29 Dartmouth Corporation had acquired an important constitutional document. It reflected a new determination in the Commons to assert the principle of independent political rights. And it illustrated an area where, in effect, they had achieved some degree of success in extending their jurisdiction.30 Can anything more be said about the specific relationship between the merchants of Dartmouth and the “Humble Answer” of 1604? In immediate terms, Dartmouth had a concern for electoral freedoms not unlike Minehead’s, though at a rather different level. Whereas Minehead had struggled to maintain its electoral franchise at all, the problem faced by the Dartmouth merchants was to keep their franchise free of outside influence. Their desire to achieve this is well evidenced in the town’s electoral history in this period, which suggests that the “Humble Answer” also had explicit, practical significance for the town. This became clear in the second election of James’s reign, in 1614. Before the election, they received a letter from the Earl of Northampton, leading minister of the crown, asking for the right to nominate one of their MPs. They replied that various other gentlemen had already approached them with the same request and been refused. The Corporation, understandably enough, shirked taking direct responsibility for turning down the Earl. They claimed that they had consulted with the burgesses and commons of the town, who had,


47

all with one voice agreed and resolved that in hope their grievances might be better made known and themselves thereby relieved, they would be at the charge to send burgesses of this place having equal feeling with themselves of the same.31 Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the letter is the assumption that the town would get better results in parliament by electing MPs from among its own number than by accepting an outsider, albeit an outsider with the ear of the king’s leading minister. At this election, and most of the others in the early Stuart period, the Corporation was successful in resisting outside patronage. The only exception came in 1625, when one of the seats went to a minor local gentleman, John Upton of Lupton, probably in part because of his Godly associations. He succeeded because he was supported by a group of freemen within the town who managed to secure a majority of electors.32 The Corporation made a vigorous attempt to prevent this happening again by enacting a new municipal law to reaffirm the custom of electing townsmen. As usual they objected to outsiders as being “in no way acquainted with the town nor experienced in its trades nor what may tend to the benefit thereof”.33 This failed to deter the freemen, who re-elected their candidate in 1626 and 1628. Precisely where the “right of election” lay in Dartmouth at this time is unclear, but there was obviously sufficient leeway for a group of committed townsmen to sway the issue. The Corporation retained its determination to resist pressure from great noble patrons, and had rather more success. In 1628, the Earl of Manchester wrote to them requesting the right to nominate one of the MPs. He was told that the commonalty had been consulted on the matter and had, entreated us to signify to your honour in this behalf that they so far presume upon your noble disposition that you desire not to prejudice their freedom of election which they have hitherto enjoyed and according to which and their ancient custom they have usually made choice of men free of the corporation and well known unto them.34 How far they really had consulted the commonalty is an interesting question, but the desire of the ruling merchant group to resist outside influence is clear enough. In view of the pressures that they faced throughout the period, it seems probable that the town was receiving similar requests in 1604, and that they preserved their copy of the Humble Answer at least in part to reinforce their sense of their right to

48


resist outside influence, just as the statement did, in general, reinforce the principle of free elections. In one respect, Dartmouth was struggling against a very powerful tide. The influx of local gentry into the borough seats is one of the notable features of sixteenth and early seventeenth century history. In a sense the situation testifies to the increased interest in parliament on all sides. For in the same way that the gentry were coming to set greater store by membership of the Commons, so the towns seem to have preferred to hold on to their direct representation if they could. There were a variety of circumstances that determined how far they were able to avoid, or at least delay the incursion. In general, the towns that were economically richest and most politically independent had the strength and confidence to resist for longest. One of the principal sweeteners that a gentry candidate could offer – that of defraying the town’s expenses – was of greatest use to the smaller boroughs. Other factors could also come into play. Nottingham, for instance, had many of the characteristics required for self-assertion. It was currently flourishing and growing as the economic centre of the county, and it boasted an independent structure of local administration. But during the 1620s it was also at the centre of a particularly lively competition for seats among the local gentry. In Tudor times the town had usually found it expedient to leave one of its nominations in the patronage of the Manners family – the dominant force in the county for much of the sixteenth century. By the 1590s their power had waned, and for the next two decades Nottingham was represented by its own burgesses in both seats. During that period there were it seems pressures for the nomination from the gentry, but the town resisted them. In 1604 for instance the correspondence of the Shrewsbury family noted that their protégé Robert Pierrepont had been “disappointed of his election to Parliament for Nottingham”. A few weeks earlier, the Corporation had confirmed the election of two townsmen.35 In 1621 however, perhaps in line with the rising political temperature, the demand from the gentry appears to have markedly increased. Five fairly minor gentlemen “stood” to be chosen as the town’s MPs. The Corporation said that it would accept two “foreigners”, for “the easing of the town’s charge”. We may doubt whether this was really the main consideration. A substantial number of burgesses certainly remained unconvinced. When a vote was taken in Hall, there were seventeen in favour of the gentry, six who would have preferred two townsmen and three who opted for one of each.36 It is not clear what lay behind this sudden advent of the local gentry. The “suitors” involved


49

had no obvious relation to particular patronage networks, but there were signs of politicisation in the context of the election. The town and its surrounding “country” are known to have been concerned about the two important issues of the day – monopolies and the Palatinate.37 In 1624 the pressure increased further. There were no less than ten gentlemen “suitors” for the Nottingham seats, and the number now included some of the county’s landowning elite. The two most prominent, from the Byron and Cavendish families, were elected.38 In 1625 the smaller gentry seem to have dropped out of the contest, but there were still applications from five of the major figures in the county. This makes it all the more interesting that there now ensued a determined effort among the townsmen to regain direct control of their representation. There was a resolution in Hall, “touching certain conferences about nominations, whether it were convenient to elect and choose two gentlemen strangers, or two townsmen burgesses and it is fully agreed that there shall be elected two townsmen that are burgesses, and none other in any wise”.39 This sounded like a very firm stand – as indeed it had to be – and two townsmen were duly elected. It is not clear whether there was a specific reason for this attempt to bring the representation back “in house”. But it certainly seems to confirm that, other things being equal, the towns tended to prefer it this way. It was, however, a losing battle. In fact, in 1626, with the political temperature still rising, the Nottinghamshire county elite were more than ever determined to add the Nottingham seats to their range of options. And they appeared better organised. There were no lists of suitors in 1626 and 1628 – just the emergence of pairings of two of the most eminent gentry in the county. By this time, local opinion had been visibly politicised by the issue of un-parliamentary financing.40 And the leading gentry were now firmly battened on to the Nottingham franchise. In 1628 the two candidates applied and had their nominations confirmed even before the election was called. This kind of focused pressure was almost impossible for the townsmen to resist. There was another vote on the issue in Hall, but it came down overwhelmingly in favour of “yielding to their request touching their elections to the parliament (if any be)”. There were 24 votes cast for accepting the two strangers, and only one townsman was bold enough to stand out and state a continued preference for the election of two of his fellows.41 On balance, the situation in Nottingham, as in Dartmouth, shows a strong desire to retain independent representation. This is difficult to reconcile with a recent study of patronage by Catherine Patterson, who suggests that the towns tended to be fairly neutral about whether

50


they had local men as their MPs. Actually, she seems to completely overlook Nottingham’s determined rejection of the gentry in 1625. And she interprets the formal words of acceptance in 1628 as a free and conscious choice.42 The other evidence indicates that this may be a serious misreading. There is always great danger in assuming that deference equals preference. But whatever their desires, the towns were unable to hold the line for much longer. By the mid-seventeenth century the balance of representation in the Commons had changed decisively, and what had once been a chamber composed essentially of merchants was now composed essentially of local gentry. It would be wrong however to characterise this simply as a takeover by the landowning class. For although the chamber certainly came under the control of the county elite, it remained the House of Commons – and this was sign and symbol of the other side of the coin. In other words, we should not underestimate the degree to which the gentry were being incorporated into the mercantile world. And in this sense the arrangement could often work to a town’s advantage. It was not simply that an influential gentleman elected as MP immediately acquired responsibility for the town’s affairs. More important perhaps was the fact that the gentry were often already attached and committed to the urban perspective. For instance, in the 1620s, Totnes was represented principally by Sir Edward Giles, and Plymouth by John Glanville. Both were established members of the gentry. But it might have been difficult to tell this on the basis of their contribution to public affairs. In parliament and beyond, the interests of the towns and of the commercial world generally could not have found more enthusiastic or effective advocates than Giles and Glanville. In truth it is a great mistake to draw a sharp line of demarcation between landowning and commerce. There were many circumstances that drew them together. At the most basic level, as Charles Wilson has pointed out, “England’s trade – in wool, leather, grain, hops, minerals – grew directly out of her land and farms.”43 And Keith Wrightson has described the very substantial degree of familial and vocational crossfertilisation that took place between town and country. “It was a fact of real significance for the relationships between rural and urban society and between the possessors of landed and commercial capital in England.”44 He also mentions the important new perspective of economic activity that was opening up – “the risky but highly profitable ventures of England’s growing overseas trade”.45 Indeed, it would appear that the English landowning class had an unusually close relationship with this dimension of the economy. Although it is now


51

little noted, T.K. Rabb sometime ago produced a useful summary of the important contribution that the gentry made in this respect. Rabb wanted to explain why Sir Edwin Sandys, from a substantial landowning family, spent so much of his time “consorting with merchants”, and getting involved in the details of trade. He concluded that Sandys was just a leading example of an unprecedented movement taking place in Jacobean England: “the entry of the landowning class into the business world” – a remarkably widespread participation in the foundation of British overseas expansion.46 The present study will include many examples of figures at all levels of landowning society who devoted much of their time and energy to the world of commerce.

Dartmouth and the impositions dispute. Merchant/Gentry relations. The growth of an opposition perspective. Absolute property versus discretionary levy. Parliament versus patent. The interests that the merchants and the gentry held in common are a persistent theme of this chapter. In fact, although Dartmouth’s record of the 1604 declaration may have been in part to provide ammunition against intrusion into their franchise, at a broader level it was an assertion of the kind of parliamentary rights that could be of importance and benefit to all. It can be said that Dartmouth’s acquisition of the “Humble Answer” shows that the Corporation was participating in, and indeed underlining, an important development that is now generally acknowledged to have taken place. There was, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, a noticeable heightening in public awareness of the significance and usefulness of parliamentary freedoms. “The fear of packed parliaments”, it has been noted “was new in 1604”.47 The sharpening of these concerns at this time is in large part explained by the context of the late 1590s, when the Elizabethan government under the pressures of war had been obliged to resort to various kinds of arbitrary money-raising tactics. In reaction, groups such as the Norfolk gentry had begun to place a new emphasis on parliament’s rights and powers as the best means of public defence against these kinds of expedients.48 It will become apparent below that precisely the same attitude and perception of parliament’s function is displayed by the Dartmouth merchants in their other main focus of interest in this assembly – the impositions debate, of which they were also to keep a substantial record.

52


This was a very striking phenomenon, and it is not explained solely as a defensive reaction to the fiscal contingencies of government. The resort to parliament as a buttress against “arbitrary” financing also had a more positive or proactive dimension – it was undoubtedly associated with a new emphasis on the freedom of property rights. This was a crucial development, though its detailed course is rather difficult to clarify. One thing we know for certain is that by the time of the impositions debate, at the end of the first Jacobean parliament in 1610, the Commons were seeking to establish the idea that property rights were inalienable or unconditional, and therefore not subject to any residual claims of the crown as overlord. But beyond that, the actual process by which “absolute” property came to replace “feudal” tenure as the preferred norm or definition is as problematic as it is significant. The transition occurred in varying aspects, with a variety of implications for different groups and interests, at different times. It is not difficult however to identify in general terms the kind of positive changes that may have made people less happy to regard their money as being payable to the government on demand. It is clear that the general economic context of the sixteenth century was very likely to have encouraged an absolute view of property. The “Great Inflation”, which was mild by modern standards but quite dramatic at the time, had seen a prolonged period of increasing population and rising agricultural prices. In other words, there was money to be made. The situation favoured some more than others. It tended to work against the very poor, but anyone with a capacity to produce for market, even at a fairly modest level, could turn a profit. The larger landowners certainly shared these opportunities, but also faced the necessity of rationalising their rental income to keep pace with prices. They had the advantage that the demand for land was strong, and they could take a firm line with their tenancies. So, from the 1590s, manorial surveys came into widespread use as a way of clarifying rights and tenures. And apart from its obvious significance in terms of tightening up management procedures, it would be interesting to know how far the practice of mapping estates gave landlords a more definite conception of the “integrity” of their property. Equally difficult to quantify is the effect of the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the sale of the church lands. Devon has been well studied in this respect, and because most of the lands eventually finished up with well-established local gentry, it has been assumed that the redistribution did not create a new class of “profiteer merchant landlords”.49 But this may be an over-simplification since the gentry were often more than ready to assume that kind of role on their own account. And the


53

new scale on which land was being sold and changing hands must in itself have reinforced the notions of “property” and “market”. A recent study by Laura Brace has looked at the idea of property in the context of seventeenth-century tithe disputes. She stresses the extent to which the conceptual shift was “contested”.50 She seeks to avoid the charge of envisaging a simple, steady progress towards the new absolute idea. But there is always a question as to how far the articulation of the contest was pragmatic or principled. In other words, the resistance may have been less the result of opposition to the concept of absolute property as such, and more a reflection of the fact that the adjustment affected different people in different ways at different times. Indeed, the “sides” are not always easy to tell apart. Thus a landowner who had a great interest in firming up property rights against the king might also have an interest in firming up rents and customary obligations against tenants. We may do better in fact to emphasise the points of connection, and to keep in mind the ways that a landlord rationalising his resources and a farmer resisting rent rises could both be experiencing a heightened awareness of the value of property. In fact, the gainer and the loser from the power of the market could be one and the same. Keith Wrightson describes how in Elizabethan Essex, William Harrison noted both the visible signs of greater affluence in the households of small farmers and artisans and the sharpened sense of anger at rising entry fines.51 It is not unlikely that the increase of economic opportunity also increased the sense of frustration at the barriers that remained. Thus the situation was in some ways contradictory and amorphous. Property rights were decided piecemeal, in the courts, in response to particular queries, disputes and customary rules, not according to some overall definition. But the arrangements did have a discernible common character – there is no doubt that in 1600 the great bulk of land was still under some kind of “feudal” or military tenure. The gentry, for instance, held most of their property as tenants of the ultimate landlord – the crown. Some farmers were freeholders, but their most usual tenure was a variety of copyhold. Where this placed them in relation to the transition in the concept of property is not always clear. Eric Kerridge, in a way arguing against himself, tried to play down the notion that tenants were at the mercy of enclosure and the market, suggesting that by the sixteenth century there was effective security of tenure. He claimed that by this time, the feudal system of land law had been largely supplanted by an assumption of estate ownership. Thus, a copyhold for life, even if held under a customary tenure, would be protected by the law as a freehold estate.52 Other historians have agreed that there was probably

54


some truth in this, but it seems to rather contradict Kerridge’s general denial of the rise of agrarian capitalism. Tenure seems not to have been the crucial factor determining success in the expanding economy. The most obviously “rising” class – the yeoman farmers – could be freeholders or copyholders. Their distinguishing feature was that they held sufficient land (typically 50 acres or more) to take full advantage of market opportunities. Conversely, the husbandman, with significantly less land but still rising rents to pay, might lose his traditional place and join the ranks of labourers. This was the basis of the polarisation of English society that seems to have taken place by the end of the seventeenth century, as convincingly described by Wrightson.53 There were parallel changes in the psychology of landownership. Those who were in a position to make money were also those who had the capacity and the incentive to make “improvements”. This became the new watchword as the idea of a “moral” economy was undermined. In seventeenth-century Dorset, for instance, “influential opinion was changing fast the market economy was making headway”.54 Thus the concept of enclosure, once condemned as antisocial, was now increasingly justified as good practice.55 All these things can be regarded as signs of a changing mindset. And the net effect might certainly have been a greater desire for personal control among property “owners”. This was no doubt reflected in the desire of the House of Commons to affirm a right of “absolute” property in 1610. But the definition lagged behind the ambition. When the parliamentary leaders went searching for confirmation of this right, they did not find it – at least not in the provisions of the Common Law.56 In fact, if one idea of the “official” nature of property was more sustainable than another, it was probably that enunciated by King James, who regularly, both in print and in person, expressed the view that all property was held of himself, as ultimate lord.57 His views were echoed by “Divine Right” apologists like John Cowell, who drew the logical conclusion that the king could raise taxes by prerogative if necessary.58 This was the position normally endorsed by the Common Law, and generally reflected in the dominant character of tenurial arrangements. One strand of seventeenth-century history then is the process by which the Commons’ definition of property came to supplant that of King James. In view of the nature of the disagreement, it may be supposed that this could not have been effected without conflict of some kind. Though it is possible that some degree of change could have been achieved amicably in 1610 with the proposal of The Great Contract, whereby in return for a substantial annual grant, the king


55

would give up some of the most onerous and hated feudal dues like purveyance and wardship. There are various possible reasons why this deal fell through. Once again, some of the contradictions inherent in the property equation were apparent. The scheme seems to have been received unenthusiastically in the constituencies partly because only a section of landholders were subject to feudal dues of this sort, and other groups objected to them being replaced by a tax which fell upon them all.59 Perhaps the most instructive aspect of this is that it seems to confirm that beyond the particular tensions, there was a heightened public awareness of property rights in general. And some MPs and their constituents would certainly have been worried that by granting the king a permanent settlement they were in danger of actually undermining their power of consent. There was limited value in gaining control of the use of their money in one way while surrendering it in another. It is an interesting question how far the king accepted that this would have altered the general character of the right of property as he himself had defined it. Perhaps the vital aspect for James was the hope that it would free him of the need to seek consent. It must be doubted whether the “Divine Right” theorists would have revised their basic assumptions even if the contract had been made. In the event, the “official” position on property did not change until after the Civil War. The abolition of the Court of Wards was one of parliament’s first acts when it became free to legislate under its own steam in 1646. As Christopher Hill has said, the ending of these feudal tenures, confirmed in 1660, marked the formal transition to a world where landlords held an absolute right in their property vis-à-vis the king.60 It is important to note that this did not mean the end of copyhold tenures on the ground. Nevertheless it can be regarded as a definitive change in the idea of property. It reflected the basic issue that had been at stake – concerning how property related to the power of the crown. And it could now be welcomed by groups who might only profit indirectly. Thus a City of London petition was happy to greet it as symbolic of a crucial development, recording “the unparalleled benefit and freedom this kingdom now enjoys in the removal of the Court of Wards, whereby the persons, posterity and estates of the subject were so much encumbered and enthralled”.61 It was a complex process, but there was a central thread running through it. And we are fortunate to have in the writings of C.B. Macpherson a cogent analysis of the essence of the change. The evidence in the present study strongly underlines the view that he put forward. Macpherson drew on the ideas of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke for

56


his concept of the growth of “possessive individualism”. His work has often drawn criticism for being theoretical and referring itself to the model of a grand transition from a feudal to a capitalist economy. But this does not make his core proposition any the less valid, or any the less accurate, as a reflection of what was being thought at the time. The recent study of the idea of property by Laura Brace, already mentioned, seems at heart sympathetic to Macpherson’s view. She writes that the notion of an inalienable right in the product of one’s own labour, such as Macpherson found in Locke, is already “there and clearly stated in the Husbandman’s Plea [Against Tythes]” in 1647.62 But to preempt revisionist criticism, she begins by accepting that Macpherson is economically reductionist, and she seeks to add “layers of complexity” to the argument. Her main contention is that the dispute over property had a moral dimension.63 She makes the useful observation that the idea of absolute property rights was reinforced by the characteristic assumption of radical religious groups that their faith was something that they owned absolutely and individually.64 The concept of Godly individualism is an important factor that has been too often overlooked by recent historians, and will reappear in other guises later in this study. It is refreshing to have it recognised. However, her main characterisation of the dispute appears less helpful. She suggests that the tithe resisters presented it as a confrontation between their “husbandry” and the “covetousness” of the collectors. But in fact both those terms were applicable by and to both sides in some respects. This certainly underlines the contradictions and complications inherent in the process, but it fails to clarify a dominant tendency, and leaves us none the wiser as to why the issue resolved itself in the way it did. For a better understanding of this we must return to Macpherson. The most consistent thread in these studies is the tension between the concept of the right of consent and the free market on the one hand and the taking of arbitrary exactions on the other. As Laura Brace says – “the central objection was to compulsion the essence of something being someone’s property was that it could not be disposed of by others without his or her consent”.65 This was indeed the crux of the matter, and the basis on which the idea of absolute property was being established. It was also the essence of the frame of mind that Macpherson described, and it tells us that his core proposition is not an economic oversimplification at all – it has a political and indeed a moral dimension. It takes its clearest shape in his analysis of the work of Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes suggested that the Civil War had an underlying cause in a new spirit of economic independence, which was especially apparent


57

of course in commercial centres and towns. In political terms this took the form of a belief that each individual was “so much master of whatsoever he possessed, that it could not be taken from him upon any pretence of common safety without his own consent”.66 Some further implications of Hobbes’s ideas in this area are looked at more fully at the end of this volume. For now, we can simply note that it was in this formulation that the concept of absolute property was most consistent and defensible. And this was essentially because in these terms it could be conceived and asserted in the context of parliamentary freedoms and the right of consent through representation. It was also in this form that the widest range of property interests could see a clear benefit, and the most stable and effective consensus could be achieved. This was why the Norfolk gentry and the Dartmouth merchants were to be found referring themselves to parliamentary liberties at this time. In the present study we will find frequent positive echoes of the notion that there was now no pretext on which property could be taken without consent. It will be seen, for instance, in the speech of Heneage Finch in the impositions debate in 1610, in the record preserved by Dartmouth Corporation.67 The concern of these boroughs for their representative rights, and for the rights of parliament as such, was not then maintained in a vacuum. It was maintained for solid, practical, economic purposes. Nowhere is this link more explicit than with Dartmouth. It can be seen first in respect of their legislative interests. Although the town apparently had no “local” legislation to propose to the first Jacobean parliament, it was, as already indicated, one of the principal proponents and beneficiaries of the general act for free trade to France, Spain and Portugal which was passed in 1606. Dartmouth Corporation said that the act was passed as a response to the complaints of “this country” against the attempts of London companies to gain monopoly control of the cross-channel trade.68 This was the only trade in which the West Country out-ports had some chance of operating independently of London based companies. Many of the ports in the area were affected by this, and Dartmouth was thus referring to a “country” which stretched quite a way beyond the town itself. Other Devon boroughs, like Plymouth and Totnes, were also known specifically to support the aims of the act. Totnes Corporation looked upon it as the precedent by which their freedom of trade was guaranteed by “the wisdom of the state in parliament”.69 The merchants of Dorsetshire also had an interest in the act: in fact, it was the MP for Lyme Regis, Sir George Somers, who suggested the committee from which the free trade bill emerged.70

58


The particular venture that linked these ports was the cod trade. They were all taking part to some degree in a lucrative and free-booting commerce in Newfoundland cod and trayne oil to France and Spain. Dartmouth Corporation had a very substantial stake in this trade, and they regularly referred back to the 1606 act as the guarantee of the conditions in which they wanted to pursue it. When, in 1609, the monopoly threat reappeared in the form of a government backed proposal for regulating the French trade by means of a London-controlled company, Dartmouth Corporation busied itself writing letters and petitions to the privy council and individual ministers to register the town’s opposition.71 They recalled that the designs of the London merchants were, openly discovered and by this country complained of in parliament in the third year of his majesty’s reign, and for prevention thereof a law was then made giving free liberty to his majesty’s subjects to trade to France and Spain. They then expressed their concern that the proposed company would give the Londoners power to “draw money” and restrain trade.72 To the Dartmouth merchants, the 1606 act was an authoritative legal statement of what they considered to be their right to operate free of monopoly restrictions and charges. William Nyell, the town’s MP in 1624, who gave Dartmouth’s free trade theories their fullest expression in parliament, took the act of 1606 as his basic reference point: “We have no liberty of trade but France and Spain, and that by care of this House 3 Jac. For they were both under patents.”73 Nyell believed that parliament and parliamentary statute could be relied upon to promote and defend free trade as he defined it. Restraint of trade was the product merely of government patents of monopoly. “No law ever restrained the freedom of trade; this constraint is grown by mere monopoly.”74 Whether or not this was historically true is less important than the present distinction that Nyell was making between the application of parliamentary law and the application of patent. His assertion that the measure had been achieved “by care of this House” was precise and pertinent, for it had been pushed through by the Commons in the face of opposition from the Lords and the king, who consistently resisted free trade legislation. Nyell’s dedication to the representative side of the assembly seems to underline the political significance of his stance. We begin to see the basis on which Dartmouth’s opposition to trading monopolies and patents might fit in with a perception of parliament as a bulwark against arbitrary financing. The essential effect of trading patents, and the


59

essential problem with them as far as Dartmouth was concerned, was that they allowed companies to make arbitrary fiscal demands: “There is a power given to every company by his patent to restrain trade as they list, and to lay what impositions they will on trade.”75 To Nyell, impositions were the real product of trading monopolies, which he described as “a pretence to reform abuses” but were actually a “way to let in fines”.76 By the same token, the only people who gained from the monopolies were the individuals who benefited from the impositions. Nyell suggested that although grants of monopolies pretended to be for the public good, they really “intend their private, which hurt the commonwealth”.77 It is clear that the merchants of Dartmouth and of the other interested West Country ports had a commitment to free trade by their own definition. The term has sometimes been regarded as a misnomer in the seventeenth-century context. Historians have suggested that it often served particular interests and did not amount to an ideology as such.78 It would indeed have been surprising if it had equated to the principle of free trade as established at the end of the eighteenth century. But the fact that it fell short of this did not mean that the characterisation of free trade was entirely inappropriate in its previous guise, or that it lacked radical significance. Although the concept was certainly employed as a means of resisting the overweening power of London merchants, this did not undermine its libertarian or liberal credentials. Quite the contrary, it was intended to express a genuine and general notion of freedom from monopoly. It did indeed serve the purposes of a group of West Country boroughs, but it was far from just a sectional interest. It will be seen below that Dartmouth and its West Country allies were happy to support Sir Edwin Sandys and the ports of the South East in their desire to be free of the controls and exactions of cloth-company patents. By the same token, Sandys was pleased to endorse Dartmouth’s campaign for free fishing. Indeed, the very fact that there was a powerful consensus for this notion of free trade in the House of Commons throughout the early decades of the seventeenth century underlines its claim to a kind of universality. Most importantly, this could be placed in a common perspective alongside other parliamentary freedoms. It is suggestive that the freetrade initiative first appeared in the Commons in 1604,79 at the same time as the heightened concern for other freedoms, like freedom of elections and free speech. The idea of free trade had a natural place in the new concern for representative rights. As already suggested above, the exactions of company patentees in the West Country could be perceived in the same light as the exactions of administrative patentees

60


had been perceived in Norfolk in the 1590s. And just as the Norfolk gentry had turned to parliament as a bulwark against these expedients, so Dartmouth and its allies could turn to parliament as the protector of “free trade” against monopolies. At the risk of oversimplification, it seems possible to see a consistent line of division emerging in people’s minds: on the one side was “arbitrary” financing, which was defined thus because it was raised either by the monarch’s sole authority, or by patents granted by the monarch to particular individuals or companies; while on the other side was an assumed right to be free of any kind of extraordinary money raising which did not have the representative authority of parliament. It is an accurate enough reflection of the underlying basis of this difference of perception to call it a division between parliament and patent. That the Dartmouth merchants did indeed adhere to this view of parliament’s rights and capacities is made clear beyond doubt by the substantial set of records which the Corporation preserved from the classic impositions controversy in 1610. This can be regarded as the most important single episode in the developing contest between “arbitrary” and “representative” money raising in James’s reign. Impositions had become an issue in 1606, when the merchant John Bate refused to pay a government imposed duty on imported currants. The history of the matter was complex.80 In the late fourteenth century, under parliamentary pressure, the crown had agreed that it would no longer raise certain custom dues without the consent of parliament. But this had not really been established as a general principle. And in the second half of the sixteenth century, under the Tudor Queens, the crown revived the practice of levying customs dues by prerogative, whether directly or through patents granted to particular merchant bodies. One of these was the Levant Company, a small group of London merchants who were given the right, among other things, to levy an imposition on currants imported from the Venetian territories. Until the start of the seventeenth century this seems to have been paid without complaint. There were, however, objections from the wider body of merchants that the company was too restrictive. Queen Elizabeth was encouraged to throw the trade open, but she resisted the demand. Then, at the beginning of James’s reign, the struggling Levant Company forfeited its charter, and the government, advised by lawyers that it did not need to seek the consent of parliament, reimposed the duty on currants direct. When the company was reconstituted on an


61

open basis, the crown retained the levy. This time payment was not so forthcoming; and in 1606, John Bate tried to avoid the levy by removing a cartful of currants from the view of the customs officers. He had the support of other leading merchants.81 Summoned before the Privy Council, Bate declared that he believed the imposition to be illegal. Perhaps with the trade now “open”, it had come to seem more anomalous. The government decided to seek a definitive judgement on the matter from the Court of Exchequer. The merchants meanwhile appealed to the House of Commons, who duly included a complaint against impositions in their petition of grievances, presented at the end of the session in May 1606. Just before parliament reassembled in November 1606, the Barons of the Exchequer published their decision, unanimously asserting that the king was legally entitled to levy impositions by prerogative. Chief Baron Fleming added the fateful gloss that the king did this by that absolute authority which he was free to exercise whenever he thought it necessary for the safety of the kingdom. Fleming thought that this was manifest particularly in his discretion regarding relations with foreign states, and that the regulation of commerce came into this category. He concluded that it would be impossible for the king to provide for this if he did not have the power to levy impositions. When parliament met and heard that the king, fortified by the Exchequer decision, intended to continue levying impositions on this basis, the immediate response was subdued, and did not seem to indicate that the Commons were inclined to make a major issue of the matter. Some influential parliamentary lawyers, including William Hakewill, seem at first to have been persuaded that the judgement was sound. For the king’s leading minister, Salisbury, this was a window of opportunity. He had taken on responsibility for the treasury – one of the more thankless tasks of government. With an ever worsening deficit, and the Exchequer decision apparently uncontroversial, there seemed every reason to exploit the situation. In 1608 he issued a new Book of Rates, levying impositions on no less than 1400 commodities. Since it would always be possible for the government to find pretexts for needing money in the state interest, this expedient created a sizeable and potentially permanent source of revenue independent of parliamentary consent. There can be little doubt that this was the moment when the implications were borne in upon MPs. When the Commons met again in 1610, impositions were not at first at the head of the agenda. Salisbury held the initiative with the proposed deal by which the king was to relinquish certain feudal revenues in return for a permanent financial settlement from parliament. It was

62


Sandys who set the other hare running. He reported that the committee of grievances had come to the matter of impositions, and the House ordered a search of the records to assess whether the precedents adduced by the government in Bate’s case were capable of being challenged. The MPs seemed to be feeling their way quite carefully – it was, indeed, quite a big question. The king was not happy that they were investigating it at all; and on 11 May, he sent a message ordering the Commons not to call into doubt his prerogative in the case of impositions. He said that they should not seek to dispute his powers or to make laws about the matter. The correct course for them, he suggested, was to petition him for grace and relief if they had any specific complaints about the effects of the levies. Most unwisely, he informed them that his general right in law was already decided. The Commons were much disconcerted by this attempt to prevent them from even addressing the issue. They tried loyally to convince themselves that the denial did not really represent the king’s true opinion. Typically, to eliminate ambiguity, James addressed both Houses on 21 May not only reiterating his instruction that they “ought not to question what a King may do” and reaffirming his prerogative of impositions, but also indicating again that he would consider alleviating “inconveniences in one or two of the impositions”, if they would consider what they would give him in return.82 Perhaps James was correct in thinking that the Commons’ investigation of the legal position implied, or would develop into, an attack on his prerogative. But he might have done better to take that chance, for it is clear that by trying to pre-empt such a move, he had precipitated or intensified the controversy in a particularly crucial way. It had become an issue of the Commons’ right to free speech. Now parliament’s ability to defend property was being challenged on two fronts, in practice and in principle. The government’s determination to stand pat on the Exchequer decision had heightened the fear that it was going to be used as a basis for future policy and could create a source of finance free of representative control. Even more importantly, the king was now trying to prevent the Commons from voicing their disapproval. If they could not do that – the game was lost. James Whitelocke pointed out that unless they registered their dissent, the right to set impositions by prerogative would indeed become established beyond dispute. Sir Francis Hastings warned that if things were allowed to stand as they were, they would be failing in their crucial responsibility to defend property rights.83 In response to the challenge, the Commons would now be driven to make the most powerful and comprehensive statement yet


63

of their perceived responsibility for protecting the public interest in the freedom of property. Solicitor-General Sir Francis Bacon tried vainly to put the genie back in the bottle. He argued that the king had been perfectly justified in forbidding them to discuss his prerogative, and reminded them that Elizabeth had often made the same injunction, and been obeyed. He urged the House to consider the matter simply in terms of the grievances of the subject, for they were entitled to discuss “the right or interest of any subject or the commonwealth” without restraint. Bacon was struggling against a very powerful tide. The distinction he was trying to draw was being rapidly overtaken by events. He was attempting to restrict the “interest of the subject” to the level of the pragmatic and particular, unconnected with issues of authority or political principle. But it was precisely the issue of principle, their general freedom to act as the guarantor of the rights of property, that the Commons now felt the need to assert. By the same token, the “interest of the subject” had developed beyond the merely pragmatic because the subject was now interested in the concept of parliamentary freedom as the bulwark against “arbitrary” financing. That was precisely why Dartmouth Corporation preserved an extended record of the impositions controversy. The difference of perspective was spelled out in the Commons’ reply to Bacon’s argument. Queen Elizabeth, they asserted, had only inhibited them from speaking on matters which concerned her personal right, like marriage and the succession. The king’s power of impositions, on the other hand, now affected everyone’s rights and interests: If it be true, as Mr. Solicitor confessed that the parliament may not be inhibited to debate of anything which concerns the right of particular subjects, much less may they be inhibited in this matter if impositions, which concerns the rights and interests of all the subjects in general in those things which they enjoy.84 The sense of conceptual confusion, the impression of crown and Commons at cross purposes in ways that they could not clearly distinguish or articulate, underlines the complexity and importance of the transition that was taking place. It can be elucidated in two crucial aspects. The new emphasis on parliamentary freedoms was precisely an assumption of the right to look at pragmatic grievances in the light of issues of principle. As a corollary, the notion of parliament as representing an aggregate of particular interests was being consolidated into the notion of parliament as representing a general, unitary public

64


interest. Traditionally, the common good had been identified essentially by, or with, the person of the monarch. In a sense the position was now being reversed. The monarch’s personal interest could be seen as relatively particular, while the public interest was being incorporated from the concerns common in the kingdom. The essential character and implications of this change were best captured by Thomas Hobbes, and are outlined in appendix 1, below. The House of Commons eventually managed to express the basis of it with reasonable clarity themselves when they sent the king a petition of right, claiming that their privilege of free speech extended to everything that affected the subjects. A copy of this statement was acquired and preserved by Dartmouth Corporation.85 Like the similar statement of right which they had preserved from 1604, it was a full and fair written copy as it appeared in the Commons Journal, 23 May 1610.86 One difference is that in the Commons Journal it was called a petition touching restraint of speech. In the Dartmouth copy it was rather more combative, entitled “A petition to the King’s majesty touching our right in disputing his prerogative.” The statement declared that it was “an ancient, general, and undoubted right of parliament to debate freely all matters which do properly concern the subject, and his right or state”. It then pointed out that “in this case, the subject’s right on the one side, and your majesty’s prerogative on the other, cannot possibly be severed in debate of either”. Thus the interest of the king’s merchant subjects in the raising of customs dues had become a national-political issue. Dartmouth Corporation also acquired a copy of James’s reply, sent on 25 May, in which he changed his stance and gave the House permission to discuss the matter after all.87 This reply was not printed in the Commons Journal, which merely stated the fact that it was reported to the House.88 The Dartmouth document is a set of notes either taken from that report or made in preparation for it. It is almost identical with the set of notes already known of among the State Papers.89 The latter is regarded as the best account of the king’s statement, in as far as it preserves the original sequence and character.90 The copy in the State Papers is, however, incomplete, and the Dartmouth version is useful in filling in the gaps – though it adds nothing of real significance to the drift of the king’s words. The tone of James’s statement was conciliatory. He suggested, somewhat vaguely, that there had been a misunderstanding. But as usual he was probably influenced above all by hopes of prising open the Commons’ purse. The petition had taken care to hint that a favourable resolution of the impasse over the impositions debate would enable the


65

House to proceed to the business of financing the royal government by other means. James signalled his interest in this by expressing the hope that they would now “hasten to the principal errand of his wants”. He did not, of course, accept the conflation of particular interests with the general public interest that the Commons were beginning to make. He suggested that if it was necessary for the business of impositions to be dealt with for the good of the subject, it was even more necessary for the business of financing the royal government to be dealt with for the good of the kingdom. And finally, he asked them once again not to impugn his prerogative. He had not intended to deprive them of their liberties, he said, but he hoped that they would not abuse them. On 23 June 1610, the great impositions debate began. And it continued thereafter on five separate days until 2 July. Dartmouth Corporation acquired and preserved some kind of record of nine of the speeches, over four days. The mere existence of this collection of documents clearly underlines the strength of the merchants’ interest in the matter. Though in a sense it would have been surprising had they not shown such an interest. There is a basic fallacy in presupposing a disconnection between the local-economic sphere and the national-political sphere. Merchants, for instance, had an obvious ongoing interest in international relations, which could crucially affect their conditions of trade, and thus their livelihood. So, manifestly, could the raising of customs dues, and the authority by which it was done. The issue of impositions was the most important fiscal-political dispute until the Ship Money case in the 1630s. And the complaint against impositions had, not unnaturally, been precipitated by a merchant, who was prepared to state that he believed such levies to be illegal and unparliamentary. The economic concerns of the merchants had become inextricably connected with the question of the rights of parliament and the scope of the royal prerogative. It should not be forgotten that the customs revenue that formed the background to the dispute was regarded as an increasingly valuable resource. Although the statistics are far from precise, and the early seventeenth-century customs’ records somewhat sparse, it does appear that trade grew quite strongly between 1585 and 1625, though rather less so thereafter until the 1650s. Newfoundland cod, as it happens, seems to have been one trade that expanded briskly throughout the period.91 Most importantly, overseas trade was perceived in the light of potential and opportunity. This may help to explain how “free trade” could come to be placed in the same desirable category as “absolute” property.

66


As with the “Humble Answer” of 1604, a closer analysis of Dartmouth’s specific motivations for keeping this record reinforces the sense of a dual practical and constitutional perspective. The debate, predictably, proved to be of little immediate use in getting the power of impositions removed. Although as part of the proposed “Great Contract” in 1610, James seems to have been prepared to consider waiving, at least for the moment, his right to prerogative levies, the agreement was never reached. Salisbury and his successors were willing to consider reductions and variations in the burden. Oddly enough, however, the real advantages to Dartmouth would have been limited in any case because the commodities which were subject to the levies of 1608 were not those of greatest concern to South Devon. Indeed, the trade on which Dartmouth’s fortune was based, Newfoundland cod, was actually exempt.92 But of course they could never be sure what might happen in the future. And this was one reason why it had turned into a matter of right. The important thing, and the best they could do, was to try as far as possible to elaborate an alternative constitutional rule in their favour. In other words, it is clear that they were saving this record for the same reason that the House of Commons had insisted on the debate in the first place – that is, as a statement of principle. The documents served as a powerful confirmation of what Dartmouth Corporation considered to be its right to trade free of discretionary impositions of any kind, and a reminder of the fact that this right was likely to derive its strongest support from the activities and powers of parliament. The conjunction between trading interests and political interests was reflected in the detailed content of Dartmouth’s selected speeches. Unlike other reports that we have of these proceedings, the Dartmouth collection is not an attempt to produce a balanced, consecutive account of the debate (let alone the whole session).93 The Dartmouth collection relates to just the one single issue, and then to only one side of the argument. The selected speakers all took a firmly anti-government line. Apart from a fragment of the opening of Sir Francis Bacon’s speech on 25 June, Dartmouth Corporation did not acquire any of the pro-government speeches. Their chosen contributors all roundly declared that the king had no right to levy impositions without consent of parliament. This underlines the intellectual motivation for the collection: the Dartmouth merchants wanted a series of parliamentary statements declaring that prerogative impositions were illegal. That, at any rate, was what they obtained. The first speech in the Dartmouth collection was also the first speech in the debate: it was Nicholas Fuller’s opening broadside on behalf of


67

the opponents of prerogative impositions, on 23 June.94 This version of the speech is important and distinctive for various reasons, and will therefore be dealt with at some length in the pages below.95 It seems probable that Dartmouth’s representatives knew Fuller personally, for what they acquired was not a set of rough notes of the speech, but apparently one of his own drafts, a clear and coherent copy, 26 pages long in manuscript. Perhaps they knew him from his involvement with the free trade issue. In February 1606, he had chaired the bill for free trade to France, Spain and Portugal, in which the Dartmouth merchants had such a lively interest.96 They would also have been aware that he was one of the first MPs to protest against impositions in the 1606 assembly, when he lobbied the House on behalf of John Bate, threatened with prosecution for refusing to pay the imposition on currants. And perhaps they had heard about the controversy in which Fuller was involved in the following year, when, as a Puritan and a lawyer, he defended some of his co-religionists who were being prosecuted by the Court of High Commission. On that occasion he went so far as to publicly deny the existence of the prerogative power by which the monarch claimed to give the court authority.97 If you were looking for someone who could be relied upon to deny the king’s right of impositions, Nicholas Fuller was your man. Dartmouth’s representatives would no doubt in any case have become aware of Fuller’s stance when he vigorously underlined his readiness to challenge the prerogative when the question of the power of impositions was first raised in the Commons on 23rd May 1610. They would have heard him offer the most blunt rebuttal of the king’s attempt to stop the House discussing the royal powers. In response to the king’s instruction that they “ought not to question what a King may do”, Fuller suggested that on the contrary, they should not hesitate to let James know “what by the laws of England he may do”.98 The petition of right which the House sent the king two days later made much the same assertion, though rather more politely, and as we have seen, this was one of the documents that Dartmouth Corporation acquired. So in reserving a copy of Fuller’s speech, they would have known exactly what they were going to get. But Fuller was far from a lone voice. In fact, Dartmouth’s acquisition of the speech is important not only because it shows how interested and involved the town was in the matter, but also because their version sheds some new light on the shared trains of thought among the leading opponents of government policy, and tells us more about the basis on which critical opinion was developing. As indicated, Dartmouth’s copy contains significant

68


differences from other versions of the text. We cannot be sure that overall it related more closely to the speech that Fuller actually gave in the House. There is another extended draft in the Yelverton manuscripts, and a comparison with the Dartmouth copy shows that both versions contain long passages which are not present in the other, and long passages which in the other are transferred to different sections of the speech.99 But the distinctive aspects of the Dartmouth version do offer some clues to suggest that in some respects at least it was more representative of the speech as given. This can be seen for instance when it is placed in the context of a briefer set of notes apparently taken at the time of the speech, as part of a record of the whole debate. These contemporary notes indicate that Fuller began by stating “two positions”: first, that the laws of England were “built on such a foundation” that they could not be changed without consent in parliament; and secondly, that since it was part of the law that the king could not set impositions by prerogative, this could only be altered in parliament.100 These “two positions” appear in a much more extended form in the Dartmouth version, but not at all in the Yelverton. It thus seems highly probable that the beginning of the speech at any rate was as it appeared in the Dartmouth copy. It is easy enough to see why he might have made the changes, for they contributed significantly to the power of the speech. In the Yelverton version, the framework of Fuller’s argument, as set out in the opening paragraph, was just a series of four assertions which he intended to defend. 1. The laws are the inheritance of the kingdom, and they direct and guide both king and subjects. 2. The laws give the people of England such a property in their goods as that the king cannot take any part of them by any kind of imposition without their consent. 3. This principle applies as much to property in manual and commercial occupations as to property in land. 4. The customs duties have always been levied by consent, and cannot be increased without it.101 But in the Dartmouth version, in the second paragraph, Fuller diverged from the Yelverton and introduced a “syllogism to make my arguments more forcible”. In this aim he was quite successful. The premises in the Yelverton had not really amounted to a framework of argument – they were little more than a set of unconnected claims about the


69

significance and content of the law. But in the Dartmouth, his syllogism enabled him to gather his points together in a formal logical scheme and relate them to a notion of sovereignty. It also gave him a political dynamic: Major premise: in England the laws cannot be made or altered without the consent of the subjects in parliament. Minor premise: freedom from impositions was once a law. Conclusion: this freedom cannot be taken away without consent. Therefore the King does not possess the power to set impositions by prerogative. Fuller declared that “by this form of argument, all objections that have been made or can be made and although it be a judgement for the King by the barons of the Exchequer are easily answered and avoided”.102 These were large claims, but his confidence was not misplaced. He had certainly identified the firmest ground for the anti-prerogative stance, and also the best way of sidestepping the rather awkward pronouncements of the Common Law. Most importantly, he had wrapped himself in the flag of legislative sovereignty. What Fuller was doing with his syllogism was enunciating the pre-eminence of parliamentary statute and the idea of representative consent which lay at the heart of it. Sovereign law in England was representative statute law. There were statutes that declared that the king could not set customs duties by prerogative. That law could not be altered by the king without consent. It was a very sound and persuasive case. It was convincing not just in itself but also because by rooting his argument in the sovereignty of statute law, Fuller had associated the raising of customs dues with the representative concept in its most fundamental and influential form. This meant that at least in terms of logic, his argument did not depend entirely on the validity of the old fourteenth-century statutes. In a sense he was simply deriving the right of representative customs dues from the right of representative law. J.P. Somerville has suggested that at this time “the questions of lawmaking and property were necessarily linked” simply because the specific rules of property ownership were governed by positive law, and the power to make it.103 But this was not really the form in which the question was being posed. It will become apparent that the link was both more general and more direct than that. It was in fact a fairly common assumption of political theory that the power to raise money went with the power to legislate. Sir John Fortescue, for instance, suggested that when the

70


monarch was sole lawmaker, then he could raise taxes without consent; but when consent was required for laws, then it was also required for taxes.104 Fuller was in effect making the same connection. It can be suggested then that what was actually happening in 1610 was that the Commons’ leaders were attempting to bring the right of raising customs dues firmly into the sphere of representative consent. The logical force of their argument in the context of legislative sovereignty that had taken root in England was hard to deny. People were obliged to obey laws only when they had consented to them. People were obliged to pay taxes only when they had consented to them. It was a perfectly natural step to suppose that people were obliged to pay customs dues only when they had consented to them. Indeed, the central purpose of Fuller’s speech as he himself stated it was to prove that the principle of consent to taxation applied as much to mercantile and manual activities as to land ownership.105 It was indicative of the way that the general principle of representative regulation was becoming established in the public mind. This was the essence of the distinction between parliament and patent. Fuller had set up a very important theme. He was not the only speaker in the debate to recognise the usefulness of drawing a connection between the power of making law and the power of raising money. One of the best known speeches, that made by James Whitelocke on 2 July, took precisely the same line. Indeed, Whitelocke’s speech was probably in part a defence of Fuller against government supporters who had attacked the premise of the syllogism because they feared they might be wrong-footed by Fuller’s attempt to direct the argument away from the issue of the content of the law and towards the issue of its provenance. Whitelocke observed, It hath been alleged that those which in this cause have enforced their reasons from this maxim of ours “that the King cannot alter the law”, have diverted the question. I say under favour they have not; for that in effect is the very question now in hand; for if he alone out of parliament may impose, he altereth the law of England So in this point the question is, whether the King’s patent hath the force and power of the law, or not; for if it be not maintained that it hath, it can never be concluded that he can transfer the property of his subjects’ goods to himself, without the assent of them.106 This seems to confirm that the Dartmouth version did, in this respect, reflect Fuller’s speech as given. Whitelocke was reinforcing the logical


71

thrust of Fuller’s concept. If the king could not, without parliament, perform the sovereign political function of making or changing the law, it was natural to suppose that he could not, without parliament, raise impositions. Whitelocke’s use of the word “patent” is surely suggestive: it could be applied to unrepresentative laws, as well as to unrepresentative money raising. Here indeed, as he said, was the crux of the issue. “Whether the king’s patent hath the force and power of the law.” Or whether parliament, on the basis of the sovereignty of representative law, had the authority to resist any kind of “arbitrary” patent. This was the basis on which a polarity between parliament and patent was developing. Fuller and Whitelocke had, in effect, made sovereignty the underlying issue. Whitelocke, in a famous statement, went on to suggest that the king possessed a two-tiered sovereignty. There was one level which he could exercise by his sole authority, and another level which he could only exercise with consent in parliament. The killer punch was that since it was there, and only there, that the king could legislate and raise taxes, Whitelocke concluded that the king’s power in parliament was “the greater of the two and doth rule and control” the other.107 This was the form in which the implications of parliament’s defining role in the concept of legislative sovereignty entered the arena of political controversy. It was not surprising that “Divine Right” theorists (like the king himself) consistently tried to argue that although conventionally the laws were now made in parliament, this was only by grace of the monarch, who was the real locus of legislative sovereignty, and could naturally make laws alone if he so desired.108 Similarly, Chief Baron Fleming, in his judgement in Bate’s case in 1606, had offered a view of sovereignty which was in effect the reverse of Whitelocke’s. Although Fleming also identified two kinds of power in the king, one ordinary and one “absolute”, he drew the opposite conclusion: the absolute power was the kind which the king exercised in his own person, without consent. It cannot be denied that Fleming’s view contained a genuine logic of its own. And this was the power, he claimed, which gave the king the right to raise impositions by prerogative when he judged it to be necessary for the public good.109 Fuller himself, having implicitly broached the question of sovereignty in his syllogism, then went on to make some further additions and alterations to the speech, pushing the argument the next and final stage towards a complete political philosophy. In a way this was rather superfluous. In political terms the syllogism stood clear and solid by itself, and would not necessarily gain very much from the support of

72


misty ideas about the original right by which law, and the power of law- making, derived its authority. But it was understandable, and quite interesting, that Fuller should want to try. In the Yelverton version, his basic philosophical position, like his list of statements about the law, was essentially functionalist. When explaining why the laws were a “high inheritance” above both king and subjects, he had relied on the ill-defined notion of “approved reason”, which determined that in the same way as discords among men necessitated governors, so the injustices of governors necessitated laws to guide them both.110 Something a little more specific seemed to be called for. This may have inspired another change in the Dartmouth version, where the concept of approved reason is set aside, and in its place Fuller attempts to express a fundamental premise about political authority. The explanation of the fact that the king is “guided and bounded by the law” is that his power is “not assumed but given”.111 The phrase “not assumed” was obviously intended to discount the idea of absolute power by right of conquest, which some absolutist theories claimed to have been the position in England since the arrival of William of Normandy.112 Fuller’s alternative, as contained in the phrase “but given”, cannot be glossed quite so simply. It had two possible applications, one of which was often used by absolutist writers, claiming that the power of the king was absolute because it was received directly and unconditionally from God: this was the basis of the theory of Divine Right.113 The second application was, however, much more pertinent to Fuller’s general purposes. Outside the realms of Divine Right theory, the idea that power was “given” usually referred to the proposition that although political authority was indeed derived originally from God, it was given to the people, who then entrusted it to the king. This was the formula employed between 1600 and 1640 by theorists who wished to deny the “absolute” power of personal monarchy.114 Since Fuller’s whole intention was to restrict the bounds of the royal prerogative, it seems beyond doubt that he intended the term “given” to be interpreted in the latter sense.115 This is also the sense of his statement, “the King is ordained for the commonwealth, and not the commonwealth for the King”.116 Fuller’s attempt at a theory of popular sovereignty prefigured a better known and somewhat clearer pronouncement attributed to John Hoskins in a speech later in the debate. On 28 June, Hoskins was said to have declared: “The regal power from God, but the actuating thereof is from the people.”117 The form in which these comments come to us can sometimes be as cryptic and nebulous as the ideas themselves. But


73

the Dartmouth version of Fuller’s speech, in which he was obviously intending to say the same thing, clearly indicates that Hoskins’s statement was not really the isolated or pioneering effort that it may have hitherto appeared.118 So once again, the document preserved by Dartmouth Corporation reveals an unsuspected, or at least previously unremarked, degree of philosophical exchange, or common currency, already existing among the oppositionist forces in the House of Commons. The Dartmouth version is also of special interest because, unlike the Yelverton, it contained an attack on John Cowell and the absolutist claims of his book “The Interpreter”. Or at least, it contained an attack on “the book of that flattering sycophant called ” – a blank space which would have been readily completed with Cowell’s name by anyone who had the slightest awareness of the Commons’ current preoccupations. Fuller’s specific suggestion was that “The Interpreter” should be publicly burnt because Cowell had denied that the subjects had an absolute right in their property and asserted that the king had an absolute right to levy taxes by prerogative.119 It is noteworthy that Cowell also took the opposite line to Fuller and Whitelocke on the important question of legislative sovereignty. Cowell tended very definitely towards the standard “Divine Right” proposition that although in practice the king usually chose to make law in parliament, he had the power to make law out of parliament if he so desired.120 Thus Fuller’s speech, in the Dartmouth version, with its crucial line of connection between property rights and legislative sovereignty was a quite appropriate place to include a condemnation of Cowell. The king, it is true, had already indicated his intention of suppressing “The Interpreter” on 8 March. But he did this not so much because he thought that Cowell had overestimated the royal powers, but rather because he feared it would create controversy to have the topic aired at all. In this respect James’s move was quite successful. By his willingness to suppress “The Interpreter”, he achieved his immediate object of pre-empting the full-scale attack on Cowell which the Commons undoubtedly had in mind. Fuller, however, was obviously still keen to raise the issue, though whether he actually did so in the House we cannot be sure. How much did all this actually mean to the Dartmouth representatives who carried home their copy of the speech? How specifically did it reflect or affect sentiment within the merchant community? It would be fascinating to know whether the merchants took it in turns to get to grips with the great diatribe they had been handed. If so, how many nodded in grateful agreement? And did any shake their heads doubtfully at the

74


underlying subversiveness of Fuller’s assault? We need not suppose that they had a fully articulated sympathy with the whole range of Fuller’s radical politics. But they were certainly not put off. In fact they also managed to acquire another of his speeches about impositions, from the next session, in November 1610.121 They clearly had a direct line to this inveterate controversialist. The fact was that Fuller’s stance, and his political beliefs, had a very obvious relevance to the interests of the Dartmouth merchants. Indeed, it can be said that he personified the notion of consistent and persistent parliamentary opposition to trading patents and impositions. The principles laid out in his speech encapsulated the confidence that statute law was inherently incompatible with prerogative customs dues. And this sympathetic association between parliamentary law and freedom from “patent” was precisely reflected in the assumptions of Dartmouth’s principal spokesperson, William Nyell, whose high opinion of the force of statute law in this area has already been cited. He believed that free trade to France and Spain had been established “by care of this House” in 1606, and that “no law ever restrained freedom of trade”.122 In this context it is also instructive to note once again how fully Nyell seems to have assimilated the idea that law meant parliamentary law. It is important to underline the fact that Dartmouth’s attachment to Fuller was reciprocated. Fuller’s speech was specifically tailored to the merchant point of view. And these connections may help to correct a misconception about the impositions debate. In the past it seems to have been assumed that MPs were essentially engaged in defending property rights against the threat which impositions posed to the principle of taxation by consent.123 This was of course an important part of the equation. But it is an error to conclude that what was really at stake was landed property, and that it was the estate interests of the gentry that defined the parameters of the dispute. This assumption rather conflicts with the fact that the central issue was customs dues. It seriously neglects the contribution that the mercantile dimension was making to the character of the constitutional debate. And it overlooks that special characteristic that English society was acquiring at this time (already described above) – that is in the way that the landowning classes were playing an especially active part in mercantile activity from the Elizabethan period onwards. The circumstances and the content of the Dartmouth documents underline this very strongly. Just as the collection shows that merchants could have their own constitutional perspective on the matter, so Fuller’s speech shows that a leading gentleman lawyer could look at the issue from a merchant’s point of view.


75

Although he began with a statement of the general principle that property could not be taken without consent, this was only the first stage of his argument. The central purpose of his speech, as he himself stated it, was to prove that this principle applied as much to mercantile and manual activities as to land ownership.124 Accordingly, he waxed lyrical about the benefits of trade and manufacture. He suggested that the whole kingdom stood to gain from a policy of reducing impositions and encouraging trade: for no trade in England ought more to be cherished than the trade of merchandise, which doth greatly uphold the wealth, strength and credit of the land and doth vent whatsoever the fruitful labour of any subject doth yield.125 It was, he declared, against the Word of God for a magistrate to restrain any “tailor, carpenter or merchant” from the freedom of his given trade.126 It was also of course against the positive law, which he said, “doth more tenderly preserve the subject’s freedom of his trade (since by trades and occupations commonwealths are upholden) than the inheritance of his lands”.127 If this was special pleading, it was certainly finding some powerful echoes in the House. There is a supporting comment of William Hakewill that illustrates perfectly how the normal day-to-day activities of merchants and traders were being perceived and presented in a constitutional perspective. Hakewill suggested that if subsidies “which came but seldom, were brought to certainty, then much more custom might, which hapneth daily”.128 This underlined the significance they gave to the mercantile sphere. And it formed the basis of a coordinated viewpoint about the preferred character of public administration. Fuller and Hakewill were asserting that these things ought to be regarded in the same light. Freedom from arbitrary customs dues was taking its place in the development of a general category of regulation by consent. Dartmouth’s copy of Fuller’s speech was the only record that they preserved from the first day’s debate. At one stage it seemed indeed that it might be the only speech of the day anyway, for it was followed by “a great silence”.129 Eventually, however, there was an exchange involving Sir Thomas Wentworth, Sir Dudley Carleton, Fuller and Whitelocke. Then there was a formal reply to Fuller from Sir Henry Montague, the Recorder of London, who asserted that the king did have the right to set impositions by prerogative.130 Dartmouth’s representatives either did not wish or were not able to acquire a record of these further speeches

76


from the first day of debate. But their interest in the matter had not ended. On the contrary, their determination to obtain a parliamentary record may actually have increased, for the next document which they preserved from the debate is in a form which indicates that they may have attempted some direct recording of parliamentary speeches for themselves. The document is a set of rough, disjointed and fragmentary notes of eight further speeches from three of the succeeding days of debate, 25 and 28 June, and 2 July. The notes are cramped together on three sides of paper, comprising a mini parliamentary diary.131 In this study it will be referred to as the Dartmouth Diary, and is transcribed as Appendix 2. The diary is very different in form from the other documents in the Dartmouth collection, being the only one that is not a full and fair copy of a speech or statement. It does not provide the same opportunity for analysis and comparison of speakers’ arguments. But in terms of the simple fact that it was made and preserved, it is in some ways of greater interest. It appears to be exclusive to Dartmouth, for neither the diary as a whole nor any of the versions of the speeches within it are extracted from any other known record of the debate. It clearly is possible that the notes were taken by the Dartmouth representatives. An analysis of handwriting is inconclusive. Good evidence exists of the hand of one of the Dartmouth MPs, Thomas Gourney, but it contains too many dissimilarities to be the hand of the diarist. Only fragmentary evidence exists of the hand of the other MP, Thomas Holland, but he seems the most likely candidate. The diarist was apparently new to the task. There is little sign of any organising technique. The handwriting is quite legible, but in all other respects the text is disorderly to the point of incoherence. Judging by other versions of the debate, we can see that there are many gaps in the Dartmouth diary, and sometimes where there should be gaps there are none indicated. Although the diary is, for the most part, arranged chronologically, it makes no distinction or mark between the different days of debate. Indeed, it can only be called a diary in parenthesis, since it provides no dates. Sometimes the speaker is not even named, and no break is indicated between one speech and the next. But the fact that the diarist was such an inexpert and impromptu note-taker only seems to underline the significance of what he was attempting. The notes may have been chaotic, but their purpose was not casual. It is not overspeculative to suggest that the Dartmouth representative may have recognised the need for further examples supporting Fuller’s view, and that therein lay the inspiration for the diary.


77

By using other reports of the speeches, it is not too difficult to clarify the text of the diary. Nor is it much of a problem to detect the special interest of the note-taker in the subject under discussion. He had a very definite view of which side of the debate he wished to record. The diary had just one organising principle – it included, in effect, only opposition speeches. And most importantly of all perhaps, the selection of speeches, and the selection of arguments within them, indicates that the diarist also had a definite view of the particular kind of opposition that he preferred. The broad message that comes over most regularly and clearly is the same as that contained in Dartmouth’s copy of Fuller’s opening speech – that it was to parliament’s representative powers that they should look for salvation, and the principle of accountability in taxation should be regarded as applying to merchandise as well as to land. Although we cannot be absolutely sure that this was the diary of one of the Dartmouth representatives, it certainly carries the kind of message that we would expect to be most welcome to the ears of a prominent “free-trading” community. The diarist began with the first speech of the second day’s debate, by William Jones, MP for Beaumaris. He was a practising lawyer, like Fuller, and the content of his speech resembled Fuller’s quite closely. The speech can be dated from the version of it in the diary of Sir Richard Paulet, and the full range of it can best be judged from the summary in Parliamentary Debates 1610.132 The Dartmouth diarist himself devoted a good deal of space to the speech, and produced a more coherent version of it than he managed with most of the others. Perhaps he had an idea of what Jones intended to say. In fact, the Dartmouth diary suggests that Jones began the speech in a way not mentioned in the other versions. It seems that he opened his argument by using the “catchphrase” of the dispute: “if the King might impose, what need he call a parliament?” This is usually regarded as encapsulating a “defensive” constitutionalism, expressing the fear that the existence of parliament would be threatened if the king established a right to levy impositions at will. But it can be interpreted very differently, as a positive statement of what parliament was actually for – that is to say, an expression of the strengths that enabled it to survive and thrive. If the king could impose, what was parliament for? The full context of the passage in the Dartmouth version of Jones’s speech emphasises the vital, practical reasons for which parliament was valued, and which the speakers in the debate were powerfully reinforcing. Jones’s central point was that the level of customs dues must be known and accepted by those who were going to

78


be asked to pay them, which was why impositions on trade should not be set without the consent of parliament. Thus, When at any time the King would lay impositions on his subject’s goods, it was complained of in parliament, for if a King might impose, what need he call a parliament. Rather than indicating his apprehensions, Jones was underlining the essential purposes of parliament – the indispensability as much as the vulnerability. He certainly seemed to share Fuller’s commitment to the principle of “free trade”. He said that mercantile activity should in essence be free of restraint; and although the king did possess a power to restrain trade for reasons of state, that is in time of war, even then he did not have the power to set impositions. This latter argument was the specific point that was recorded most clearly and frequently in the Dartmouth diary; five times in fact, and it was also to be found originally in Fuller’s speech. Fuller had said that the king could only restrain trade in time of war, when it was necessary for the good of the commonwealth; and even then he could not take money for dispensing with that restraint. He had concluded that if the king did take impositions for dispensing with restraint of trade, he would be serving not the public good, but his own profit.133 So what was the special significance of this point that the diary recorded so often? One reason that the opposition speakers were raising it was the context of Bate’s case, which Chief Baron Fleming had set so firmly in the sphere of foreign policy. It was supposedly the king’s rights and requirements in respect of international relations that justified his assumption of prerogative levies on overseas trade. The parliamentary speakers were turning this argument on its head. They were asserting that even when the king’s discretionary powers were at their most indubitable, that is in time of war, even then he did not have the right to set impositions without consent. He could restrain trade on those occasions, but he could not set impositions upon it. This actually did quite a good job of exposing Fleming’s line as somewhat specious. And there was a particular reason that the diarist might have found this line of argument appealing and familiar. It reflected the experience of Dartmouth merchants – showing again how easily the basic interests of a merchant community could come to involve a significant constitutional dimension. In fact, the community of Dartmouth had a very


79

pertinent, and no doubt still vivid, experience of an occasion when trade had been “restrained” for reasons of state. In 1588, the Newfoundland fishing voyages had been discontinued for a year while the Elizabethan navy, manned in large part by West Country fishermen, had engaged with the Armada.134 The transfer of energies was not grudged, since in general the war with Spain worked to the benefit of the fishing trade. The balance whereby the government intervened forcefully against Spanish sea power, but otherwise left the fishermen free to trade as they wished, was in truth critical to the success of the venture; and this no doubt served as a model by which the merchants judged the government’s position in such matters. Following Jones’s speech, the Dartmouth diarist began to record the very long speech in which Solicitor-General Bacon replied to Fuller and Jones on behalf of the crown. The note-taker did not however persist very long with this speech. He seems in fact to have stopped recording just as the basis of Bacon’s argument became apparent. Bacon had begun by acknowledging that there were some exceptional commodities and types of trading activity on which the king did not have right to impose. The diarist recorded this, and also noted Bacon’s introduction of the “universal negative” around which he intended to construct his argument: the premise that prerogative impositions had never been called in question in the courts. The diarist stopped recording at the point at which Bacon began to spell out the implications of his argument: that it was up to the courts to decide about the power of impositions; it was not something which could be decided by parliament, which only had the right to challenge the levies in respect of the particular grievances to which they gave rise. This may have been merely coincidence, but it is certainly worthy of note that the diarist ceased to record Bacon’s speech at the moment when it became clear that his purpose was to undermine the notion that parliament could offer an effective defence against impositions. The next major speech in the debate was that of Thomas Hedley; though there is some doubt as to whether he followed Bacon immediately, or spoke when the debate resumed some three days later.135 Either way, it may seem surprising that the Dartmouth diarist made no attempt to record it, for it was one of the most substantial opposition efforts. It is possible, however, that the diarist showed less interest in the speech because it adopted a significantly different approach from that taken by Fuller and Jones. It was specifically legalistic, consisting largely of a discussion of the nature and application of the common law. It was in fact an attempt to reclaim the support of the common law from those

80


government apologists like Bacon who were presenting it as an endorsement of prerogative impositions. This was in some ways a logical course for the opposition to pursue; but it led Hedley to adopt a position which in a sense actually contradicted the most powerful arguments which we have seen put forward by other opposition speakers. Hedley asserted that they should look to the common law for salvation rather than parliament because the common law was “of more force and strength” in opposing the prerogative.136 At the risk of reading too much into the absence of Hedley’s speech from the diary, it would not be surprising if the Dartmouth representatives felt that in view of the decision in Bate’s case and the stance being adopted by Bacon, the common law was not in truth the opposition’s strongest suit, and that in fact Fuller, Whitelocke and Jones were absolutely right to politicise the argument and emphasise the authority of parliament as the originator and arbiter of law. The diary resumed on 28 June, with an attempt to record a speech by the radical opposition figure, John Hoskins. This was a major set-piece contribution, but in truth the Dartmouth diarist made little sense of it. On the same day came the important speech of William Hakewill, and from this the diary managed to convey the general argument that customs had always required consent. They also picked up again the particular point that even though the king had a right to restrain in time of war, he could not collect impositions for waiving that restraint. On 2 July, the diary attempted another major opposition speech, by James Whitelocke, and while the note-taking did scant justice to the speech as a whole, it did convey one clear and familiar message – the law left merchants free to trade, paying only the due customs, which could only be levied by consent; and although the king had a right to restrain in time of war, even then he could only impose by consent of parliament. The diary’s penultimate effort was a substantial and quite successful rendering of a complex argument by Sir Heneage Finch, also on 2 July. Finch set out to refute Bacon’s view of the common law, but unlike Hedley, he did so by elevating the position of parliament. He began by setting out the concept of absolute property, already suggested above as a crucial part of the background to the debate. He said that every man had property in his own goods against the king as against all other men, “and any man that would take away any man’s goods must show their reason for it”. He stated that despite the claims of the Solicitor-General, the common law did not give the king a power to impose; and even if it had given him such a power, this was simply and unequivocally denied him by parliamentary statute. Bacon, and others, had contended


81

that the common law provided the basic authority by which customs dues were raised. But Finch asserted specifically that parliaments were as ancient as the common law and therefore at least equally plausible as the original source of customs dues. And once again there came the familiar statement that although the king could restrain in time of war, even then he could not set impositions. Finch’s speech thus fitted very well into the pattern of argument that the diarist seems consistently to have preferred. Finch followed, and in some respects enlarged upon the line taken by Fuller, Whitelocke and Jones. The gist of it was that customs dues should only be raised by consent, and that parliament and parliamentary law was the guarantee of this principle. The final speech recorded in the diary was that of Christopher Brooke, another staunch constitutionalist in the same mould as Fuller. It is not certain whether Brooke spoke on 2 July or in a continuation of the debate the following day, and his contribution was not well recorded. The only extended version of the speech is in the notes of the debate edited by S.R. Gardiner.137 Judging by this, the Dartmouth diarist produced just a very abbreviated version of what Brooke said – scarcely more than the opening statement of the question, and a single sentence summary reflecting Brooke’s general view: “he was of the opinion that the King could not impose on English commodities”. We can only speculate as to why the diary did not make more of Brooke’s speech. He followed the same general line as Finch, Whitelocke and Jones, but if the version in Debates is a good guide, his arguments tended to be somewhat drier and more involved, and there were fewer clear expressions of the concept of representative rights, which the Dartmouth diarist seems to have preferred to hear and record. Overall, the Dartmouth diary, and the extraordinary collection of documents as a whole, seems to display not only a general interest in parliament at a time of constitutional dispute, but also a clear recognition of the specific ways in which the product and the principles of representative law were to be regarded as the natural safeguard of “free trade” and the most reliable bulwark against discretionary money raising. These merchants clearly took a most positive view of the validity of the challenge to the royal powers. It shows that a merchant community could be directly and naturally involved in the development of an opposition stance. In fact they could have a particularly powerful sense of the advantages of regulation through parliament rather than by patent. As already suggested above, merchants have been rather underestimated by historians in this respect. Revisionists have in general preferred

82


not to deal with any group that might relate to a bourgeois revolution (or that did not relate to the upper gentry). Some more counter-revisionist inclined historians have done work on the towns. A study of Bristol, for instance, concluded that the merchant elite did have a broad outlook in terms of international trade, but also that it formed a very exclusive group politically, and had a distinctly conventional and hierarchical concept of its position.138 The Marxist approach has been somewhat ambivalent. Although some have embraced the contemporary view that commercial centres tended to encourage a spirit of intellectual enquiry and radical opinion, others have chosen to emphasise the extent to which mercantile elites were happy to collaborate with the old feudal order.139 Robert Brenner is a recent voice reinforcing the characterisation of the quiescent and conservative merchant in the context of seventeenthcentury London. Notwithstanding the fact that the impositions controversy was instigated by a group of very determined London merchants, Brenner concludes that for the first four decades of the century, the merchant community was essentially passive in its political stance vis-à-vis the crown.140 He allows an exception from 1626 to 1629 when disputes over impositions (again) and tonnage and poundage saw protests coming forth from the merchants. But even then it was supposedly a radicalised House of Commons that turned “the merchants’ simple economic grievances into a constitutional issue”.141 One cannot help but feel that this does less than justice to the intellectual horizons of the London merchants. And in truth it seems to be something of an unsubstantiated assumption. Such evidence as we possess actually appears to indicate that the initiative in raising the question of impositions in the mid-1620s came, as before, from the merchants themselves.142 It is true however that the London mercantile elite tended to be the major company patentees, and that to this extent they had a community of interest with the crown. It is also true of course that the establishment in the City of London was pro-Royalist when parliament and crown approached the parting of the ways in 1641. But their privileged position could constitute a quite narrow power base. Of the 22 London merchants elected to the Long Parliament, the 12 expelled as monopolists were Royalist, and 9 of the remainder were parliamentarian. The City government itself became parliamentarian after a revolution of the citizenry dislodged the old guard. The new regime did have support among merchant groups, but these, so Brenner tells us, were “newmerchants” or “colonial interlopers” outside the mainstream.143


83

Brenner’s description of the nature of the new-merchants actually fits quite well with the character of the West Country groups as described above. Like the latter, the colonial interlopers tended to work in contradistinction to the privileged circles of patentees. They too focused on the new opportunities arising across the Atlantic. And partly as a consequence of this, they displayed a particular approach to foreign affairs – favouring a sea war with Spain to open up the Americas to English trade.144 This, as Chapter 4 will show, precisely reflected the view in the West Country. But of course the real thrust of the Dartmouth evidence contradicts Brenner’s general conclusion that the characteristic position of merchants in the political disputes of the early seventeeenth century was either passive or supportive of the royal establishment. It is not in any case clear why we should regard the attitude of London’s old-guard patentees as representative of the mercantile stance in these matters. There are many reasons to suppose the contrary. The great majority of commercial centres inclined quite decisively towards parliament in the Civil War. Almost all the main ports were parliamentarian. Some of the bigger towns deep in Royalist territory long held out for parliament. Conversely, in the few substantial towns where Royalist groups were in power at the beginning of the struggle, their position tended to be shallow. In Newcastle, for instance, they were essentially monopoly interests, and were ousted when the broader range of sentiment in the town was able to make itself felt. Revisionists, like Anthony Fletcher, have sometimes recognised this phenomenon, but played it down by interpreting it in a negative way, with the argument that parliamentarian allegiance was the option that best suited the introverted and defensive urban instinct.145 Contemporaries tended to take a more straightforward view, and assume that the allegiance of the towns indicated a general and positive inclination towards parliament. Clarendon thought that a “factious humour possessed most corporations” and led them to oppose the king. Similarly, Hobbes noted that in contrast to the king, parliament could rely on the support of “almost all the corporate towns in England”.146 This chapter has perhaps gone some way to elaborate a political basis for the parliamentary allegiance of the commercial centres. Right from the beginning of the century, merchants and the mercantile sphere played an active and sometimes defining role in the development of opposition to the crown. They contributed crucially to that frame of mind that rejected the “arbitrary” and embraced the “representative” forms of finance and regulation. There has been much debate among

84


historians as to whether there could have been an opposition movement at this time. In a sense it has been a rather artificial discussion. Both traditionalists and revisionists have often focused somewhat simplistically on the question of whether modern forms of political organisation were emerging. This is surely not the real issue. The fact that there is little sign of parties or ideologies taking shape does not preclude the possibility of a coherent anti-governmental position. At the very least, the viewpoint illustrated by Dartmouth Corporation seems to have entailed a belief that the representative institution offered a commonly accredited alternative to certain prominent features of the current royal approach to administration. I have given this the general characterisation of a polarity between parliament and patent. If it was not yet a programme, it was certainly coming to entail a kind of vision. It should be clear, however, that this constitutional interest in parliament did not have to involve a developing ideology of parliamentary constitutionalism, as a recent historian has supposed would be required by an oppositionist party and has found to be lacking.147 It is not, for instance, crucial that the Dartmouth diarist showed little awareness of the essays into fundamental political concepts made by Whitelocke, Hoskins, and indeed by Brooke, who, according to a report in the State Papers, referred himself to the principle “Salus populi suprema lex”. The important thing is that this sort of high theory was not really required for the kind of politicisation that we have witnessed in Dartmouth. The increased public interest in the constitutional position of parliament took the form of a working knowledge of the authority and capacity of representative law and regulation, and a growing recognition among MPs and their constituents that the consolidation of parliamentary rights was the best guarantee of their socio-economic interests.

4 The Foreign Policy Dimension

The broad scope of the public interest. Foreign affairs and the West Country economy. The mercantile perspective again. The question of choice in war and taxation. Nottinghamshire and the evaluation of parliamentary services. The parliament of 1610 was something of a turning point in national affairs. It witnessed a full-blown constitutional dispute about the rights and wrongs of money raising, and a subsequent failure to place the balance of fiscal power on a more constructive basis. In the wake of the Commons debate, the government again indicated a readiness to reduce some of the impositions, but the king was not willing to abandon his right to set them. The controversy had served to underline some fundamental differences, which made it more difficult for Salisbury to achieve his “Great Contract”, whereby feudal revenues would be relinquished in return for a permanent financial settlement to the crown. The failure of the Contract is perhaps best explained on the basis that ultimately it satisfied neither side as a long-term solution to the problem. The king would have been giving up an ancient right for a settlement that was neither adequate nor inflation proof. The Commons were unwilling to grant more, and were wary of setting the king free of the principle of representative regulation that they were seeking to establish. But whatever the precise reasons for the breakdown of the plan – the consequences were clear. The financing of government was unreformed, and the tensions were exacerbated It was the beginning of a vicious circle of inadequate provision, government expediency, and increasing public distrust. In fact, the souring of relations resulted in a fiscal and 85

86


administrative “dysfunction”, which is acknowledged by historians of all persuasions as one of the factors that defined the politics of the period. There is much less agreement as to what this implied. The revisionist view is that parliamentary obstructiveness reflected an essentially negative attitude towards public affairs on the part of the localities and their MPs. But the foregoing chapters have suggested that, on the contrary, opposition forces were developing an alternative construct of the common good. This showed in the way that they promoted representative forms as a solution in all spheres, and assumed a general, priority right for the freedom of property. Thus “parliament” could take on a very positive aspect compared to “patent”. Underlying this was an awareness of the sovereignty of parliamentary law, and the capacity of the Commons to define the public interest. One of the less obvious, but most important, long-term political effects of the fiscal and administrative impasse came from the disruption that it caused to the process and provision of legislation – the function that was increasingly seen as a vital aspect of parliament’s work by the kingdom at large. The assembly of 1604–1610 had witnessed a peak of legislative activity, both in the numbers and in the importance of the measures produced. It had addressed a wide range of crucial issues, both local and national, covering the social, economic, religious and legal spheres. And a host of private acts had been passed. But even as the potential of representative legislation was coming to be realised, so its practice was being brought to an untimely halt. The strained relations between king and Commons would make such levels of legislative activity almost impossible to attain in future. The Addled Parliament was a graphic example of the problem. When the Houses were called in 1614, the Commons were still determined to challenge the ever increasing incidence of impositions. But the defenders of the levy were now equally entrenched. The Bishop of Lincoln declared that it was actually seditious to question the royal prerogative in this way, and a dispute arose between the two Houses. The Commons asserted their strategic strength and sought to make supply conditional on the removal of impositions. The assembly ended abruptly, with no satisfaction for anyone. It provided no money for the king, and no legislative opportunity for the Commons. There was an aftermath which further illustrated the growing sharpness of the division. The king presided over the burning of the written arguments that the Commons’ leaders had intended to use to make the case against impositions to the Lords.1 This act of destruction was in revealing

The Foreign Policy Dimension 87

contrast to the care with which the Dartmouth representatives had preserved precisely the same kind of record. The further implications that this administrative impasse had in frustrating legislative activity, and yet heightening the awareness of representative rights, will be the subject of the next chapter. But for the moment we can note that when James called parliament in 1620, it was not in order to compromise over impositions or provide an opportunity for legislation – it was as a means of addressing specific imperatives in foreign affairs. Ironically, in so doing, he was opening up another aspect of the question of how, and by whom, the public interest was to be defined. The king needed the moral and financial support of his subjects because of developments in the war in mainland Europe, which had begun in 1618. In fact he summoned parliament as a response to the crisis which had seen his daughter and son-in-law deprived of their Palatinate kingdom by the Catholic forces of Spain and the Empire. James was not, however, proposing to ride to their rescue at the head of an army. He was always more pacifically inclined than most monarchs of the time. And in some ways his view of himself as a peacemaker was to be commended. But his devotion to the status quo also owed much to a special concern for the defence of royal authority. This was certainly one thing that gave him pause when it came to challenging the Habsburgs, whom he considered to be the very model of a legitimate, hereditary, not to say “absolute”, monarchy. For these reasons, he was not looking for an outburst of popular indignation against Spain and Catholicism. In fact he specifically attempted to discourage public debate on the issue. His summoning of parliament was therefore intended essentially as a kind of tacit demonstration of sabre-rattling, and of course as a possible source of subsidy. Traditionally, Whig historians believed that the political nation had a very different and rather more positive idea of the kind of action that was required, and that there was a widespread assumption that this expectation would be given voice in parliament.2 Revisionists, led by Conrad Russell, challenged this view and asserted that parliament’s role in these matters was, again, essentially passive, and the Commons was not expected to perform the function of conveying a public mood to the government. For Russell, it was the practical strains of the war effort that created tension within the body politic – not issues of principle.3 Postrevisionist work by Tom Cogswell and Mark Kennedy has already done much to restore the situation and show that the traditional view was essentially correct, and that, at least in 1623–1624 over the issue of the

88


Spanish Match, there was a definite public preference in foreign affairs.4 The evidence, albeit fragmentary, from the West Country, certainly supports the idea that there was public concern over matters of foreign policy, and that people looked to parliament to express this on their behalf. Indeed, it probably tells us something more. The manner in which these borough representatives involved themselves in the debate over international affairs illustrates more clearly than anything how a series of public imperatives – political, economic or religious – could develop in the medium of the parliamentary arena to become a selfdefining national interest: that is to say a notion of the common good which could be conceived through the representative processes of the Commons, and espoused quite independently of the policies of the crown. Even in this broadest dimension, the public sphere was beginning to take on a life of its own. And as public opinion began to express itself on a wider diplomatic canvas, it did not lose contact with the world of economics. It is particularly important in the context of the present study to note once again the connection between national politics and local economic affairs. The attitudes of these boroughs towards foreign policy were inseparably linked to their economic needs. It was another way in which the mercantile perspective could define a public interest. In fact, there was quite a close, symbiotic relationship between the development of West Country trade and the articulation of a distinctive national foreign policy. It was the annexation of Newfoundland to the English crown in 1583 that created the platform for the success of the cod fishing venture that was so crucial to Dartmouth and other West Country ports. War with Spain in 1584 gave the English navy the opportunity to sweep the area clear of Spanish and Portuguese competition. And the West Country interest thrived mightily from that time on.5 They reciprocated the favour in full measure. West Country fishermen comprised a large, vigorous and highly skilled element in the general mobilisation of the navy to resist the Armada in 1588. Percy Russell quotes the Dutch writer De Witt who believed that “the navy of England first became formidable by the discovery of the inexpressibly rich fishery of Newfoundland”.6 The connection was not a casual one. This chapter will underline an important circumstance of which recent historians have tended to lose sight. It is conventional wisdom and technically true that decisionmaking in the field of foreign affairs was the preserve of the crown and its elite nobility. But the emphasis on this executive dimension should not be allowed to conceal the fact that the inspiration and essential


character of what became classic English foreign policy owed more to the commercial element in society than to anything else. Like the fishermen, the West Country merchants played an active part in the naval mobilisation of 1588. Many of the borough representatives who we have already met in the first Jacobean parliament had a distinguished record as wartime administrators in their localities, coordinating the effort against the Armada. Walter Dottyn, who has figured as MP for Totnes in 1604 (and was closely involved with the attempted charitable uses legislation), had also been prominent in 1588 as the collector of Armada contributions from a wide area of south Devon. In fact this task took him to 46 parishes, gathering funds for the fitting out of the two ships “Crescent” and “Hart” for active service. He was collecting the money by virtue of a Privy Council order that neighbouring areas should be expected to assist Totnes and Dartmouth in financing the exercise.7 This illustrated the consistently supportive attitude which the Privy Council seems to have adopted in the matter. They were anxious that the money should be raised in the fairest way, specifically taking into account the misfortunes that the merchants had recently suffered in the French market. It indicated that the government had a full awareness of the balance of interests at work here. Thomas Holland (the Dartmouth MP in 1597 and 1604) was another who was vigorously involved in 1588, travelling up to London to collect money from Sir John Hawkins to help fund the provision of the ships. Holland also made a substantial personal contribution to arming and supplying the two vessels.8 The town of Bridgewater, just a few miles inland from the Somerset coast, was principally a cloth-producing centre, and not really an oceangoing community like Dartmouth (though later in the century it was to acquire a noted naval tradition through its links with the Blake family). In 1588 it was less well geared than the South Devon ports to equipping a naval craft. But it nevertheless responded with some degree of enthusiasm to the government’s request for a ship to be employed against the Armada.9 The Corporation was in fact able to tell the Privy Council that they had completed the furnishing of a vessel on their own initiative. This was apparently made possible by the generosity of one of the town’s merchants Robert Bucking (again, to become their MP in 1604) who offered his own ship the “William”, and advanced much of the money needed to fit it out.10 He may well have regretted this gesture to some extent, for in February 1591 he had cause to complain to the Privy Council that he was due to be reimbursed £378, and the promised collection from the surrounding countryside had so far produced only

90


half that amount.11 The Privy Council, on this occasion, did not feel an urgent need to make up the difference, but merely issued an order for the collection to be completed. Subsequent events would seem to indicate that Bucking failed to get full satisfaction, for in July of the same year, with four other townsmen, he signed a decidedly unenthusiastic response to a further request from the government for a ship for the “fleet at Azores”.12 These townsmen MPs and their neighbours were thus directly and inevitably involved in the mechanics and balances of state affairs and foreign policy, which had an obvious effect on the conditions in which they traded, and equally obviously depended to a great extent on their participation when the crunch came. This is not to say that the relationship was an uncomplicated one, or that the consequences of war at sea, even of war with Spain, were always uniformly beneficial to their interests. Bridgewater, for instance, had no substantial stake in the cod fishing, and less to gain from dislodging the Spanish grip in the New World. In fact, their trade seems to have depended largely on the maintenance of friendly relations with the Iberian Peninsula, and consequently suffered during the Spanish war. The town apparently recovered somewhat with peace in 1604, but never regained the substantial exporting status that they had possessed for much of the sixteenth century. Wars were always something of a double-edged sword. But the importance of the popular reception of the pattern of foreign and military policy that had emerged in the 1580s should not be belittled (hard though revisionist historians have tried). The success of 1588 might have been scrappy and fortunate in reality (as such things usually are), but the legend it created was powerful and crystal clear. It could be invoked across the whole range of vital national interests: military prestige, commercial expansion, the defence of Protestantism and, in due course, the defence of English liberty. In fact, the defeat of the Armada immediately set up the prospect of a virtuous circle of policy and activity which, though it might not always be repeatable in practice or reliable in its results, remained as a model, certainly in the minds of the West Country representatives as they approached the prospect of a new round of foreign tensions and hostilities in 1620. The significance of the existence of this perception of an ideal balance of policy cannot be overestimated. It was the basis of a self-defining national interest in foreign affairs. Wallace MacCaffrey, in an important article, described how the Elizabethan period saw a change in the way that foreign policy was presented – from being justified on the basis of dynastic rights, to being justified on the basis of national interests, entailing the confidence


of parliament.13 This was a crucial development, and the consequences have been surprisingly little noted. In 1620 the religious side of the circle was naturally to the fore. Some of the citizens of Bridgewater, for instance, were very much preoccupied with this aspect of the international situation, and eager that certain problems associated with it would be dealt with in the coming parliament. On 22 December 1620, just before the election, the mayor and other citizens presented evidence to the Privy Council about a dispute which had taken place in the town a week earlier. They were making a complaint against one Alexander Whillege, whom they suspected of Catholic sympathies. Whillege was from nearby North Petherton. On his way home from London he had found himself in the company of John Harris, a Bridgewater tradesman, and his friend Edward Cadwallader. The encounter was reported as follows. Cadwallader began by inquiring whether Whillege had any news of the events in the Palatinate, and expressed his satisfaction at a report that the Catholic General Spinola was dead. He then described some measures which were being taken locally to expose recusants, and voiced his expectation that parliament would ratify and extend this kind of exercise at a national level: I hope that this parliament there will be some course taken for them, and that they shall either appear or lie in gaol, for I think this is a great cause for calling the parliament. In truth of course this was not very high among James’s reasons for calling the assembly. But it was certainly a plausible prediction of the kind of approach that the Commons would seek to encourage. As Whillege reluctantly agreed, it was likely that the coming parliament would indeed attempt some course against recusants, though he did not endorse this approach himself. He suggested that it would provoke powerful resistance, and that in fact far from helping to solve the international conflict, it would simply create similar conflict in England. This was actually much closer to the king’s position, but Whillege’s opponents were notably unimpressed by the line of argument. Harris declared that the papists should be driven out of England, or “hanged up”. Whillege retorted that he did not believe that this kind of general proscription was practicable or would ever take place. Cadwallader then said that he did not think that the English Catholics were contributing enough money to the Bohemian cause, and Whillege apparently, and rather

92


unwisely, said that he saw no real reason why they should contribute anything at all. Whillege was being manoeuvred into appearing to adopt the extreme Catholic position. Cadwallader reiterated his expectation that parliament would take appropriate order for these matters, and added that he hoped that the Houses would be thoroughly searched in case of a repetition of the Gunpowder Plot. Whillege then made a statement by which he seems to have intended to deplore the idea that anyone should threaten violence against the king, but Harris preferred to assume that his pro-recusant sympathies implied the opposite. The obvious determination that Whillege should be exposed and suffer for his opinions extended to Harris’s wife, who was the one who suggested his arrest, saying “this is a pretty fellow, ‘tis pity but that he were examined”.14 The episode is instructive in various ways. At one level it is a rather sad illustration of neighbours talking themselves into a quarrel over matters of which they did not have a properly balanced or rational view – quite needlessly projecting the international situation into their own community relations. And it seems to show that in as far as the king’s attempts to suppress public dispute were aimed at preventing this kind of contention, they were not entirely without good purpose. But obviously the incident also confirms that already in 1620, ordinary people did feel a powerful interest in these issues, and that their view did not necessarily run along the same lines or at the same pace as royal policy, and was rather more likely to find its voice in the House of Commons. It is a fascinating glimpse into the kind of disputation that was no doubt taking place on quite a wide scale. Voters in Nottinghamshire, for instance, were also said to be much exercised by the question of the Palatinate during this election.15 James’s disapproval of public discussion owed much to his belief that foreign policy was for his consideration alone, and something, no doubt, to an awareness that the predominant view of the international situation among the English political classes was significantly different from his own at a number of levels. James was always sufficiently acute to take note of the inclinations of his subjects in one way, if not in another. Thus, when he placed an embargo on discussion of foreign affairs in parliament, it was partly because he believed that the Commons did not have the right to deal with such matters, but probably also because he knew well enough that left to its own devices the House would press for war with Spain, while he was still hoping to persuade the Spaniards to relinquish the Palatinate by negotiation. Prevented from actually debating the matter, the Commons sought other ways of demonstrating where


their sympathies lay. The best they could do was something akin to what the citizens of Bridgewater had been engaged upon. The House indulged itself in an irrational outburst of anger against the Catholic sympathiser Edward Floyd, who was suspected of insulting the Palatinate royal family. The MPs vied with each other to devise the most ghoulish sounding punishments. William Nyell of Dartmouth was keen to add his suggestion to the list, proposing that Floyd should be “metamorphosed into a viper”, and then sent to the Lords for “a further punishment”.16 The House may perhaps be forgiven for this somewhat ridiculous display of petulance in view of their pent up feelings at being prevented from pursuing or advocating more decisive courses. The sense of frustration was sharpened when the king called a recess in June, though the programme of legislation was uncompleted, and the problem of the Palatinate had still not been directly addressed. The Commons did however finally find a constructive way of making their position on the latter issue clear. Just before the recess they published a declaration, probably engineered and certainly co-drafted by ex-Totnes MP, Sir Nathaniel Rich. Rich was now sitting for East Retford in Nottinghamshire, but he retained a typically West Country view of foreign policy, based on antipathy to Spain for religious and commercial motives (though his own special interest was not Newfoundland but the West Indies). The declaration stated that if, perchance, the king’s attempts to negotiate the return of the Palatinate should fail, and James found himself obliged to turn to more forceful methods, the House would not be backward in offering provision. The Commons’ Declaration impressed the Honiton diarist Walter Yonge, who cited it at length and expressed the hope that it was similarly approved by the king.17 Others, however, perhaps because they were a little closer to the action, were less sanguine about the prospects for an effective consensus. Richard Wynn, who sat for Ilchester in Somerset in 1621, had his family base in North Wales, but his critical view of government inaction had much in common with other West Country MPs. Wyn is not recorded as having contributed to debates in the House. Indeed, in this particular field he would scarcely have had an opportunity. But he expressed powerful opinions when he wrote home to his father at Gwydir after the recess. He voiced his dismay that the legislative programme had been aborted, and that the king had failed to take advantage of the assembling of parliament to institute a forward policy in response to the military situation on the Continent. “All the princes of Christendom are arming yet we are not moved with all this. I pray God keep us, for we were never more in need of his help.”18

94


In one sense, the Commons’ Declaration worked as intended, for it was no doubt the specific promise of supply that induced the king to recall parliament in November 1621. In so doing, James had effectively committed himself to allowing a foreign affairs debate of some kind to take place. But the problem remained that the king and the Commons were still far from being of one mind as to the kind of policy to be pursued. The king was still strongly inclined to continue his attempt to regain the Palatinate by negotiation, and was in fact considering a marriage treaty with Spain, involving his son Charles. James must have been aware that this would be anathema to the Commons. He therefore instructed the House that it should confine itself to giving generalised indications of support rather than specific, strategic advice. As James himself succinctly expressed it a fortnight later, he expected them merely to “advise upon supplies”.19 It was most unlikely that MPs, finally given their chance to speak, would allow themselves to be prevented from voicing their opinions. And in fact their views proved to be powerful and consistent. Sir Edward Giles, MP for Totnes, forcefully expressed the classic West Country foreign policy, and it was generally in line with the views of the majority of speakers. Giles proposed that the best way of freeing the Palatinate was by declaring war on Spain. He advised the king to “take Elizabeth’s course find his Indies”.20 In fact, almost all the recorded speakers on 26 November 1621 opted with little hesitation for an all-out war with Spain. Thomas Crew specifically echoed Giles’s emphasis on “opening” the Indies, and concluded, “we all see which way we incline”.21 William Nyell, now MP for Dartmouth, was naturally very much in accord with the general mood, and he was determined that the House should not be constrained from stating its position. When on 27 November, MPs began to reach the logical conclusion of seeking to have Spain named as the enemy, The treasurer of the Duchy of Lancaster attempted on behalf of the government to obstruct the move. But “he was quickly crossed by Mr Nyell, resorting to the former questions, against whom we should fight”.22 Nyell asserted that his membership of parliament gave him the right and duty to voice his opinions on these matters: If I were not a member of this House I would not touch it but now I am called upon to discharge my conscience. Now of these enemies.23 Nyell warned that Spain was seeking worldwide domination in every field: military, commercial and religious. He thought that negotiations would be worse than useless, and would simply enable the Spaniards to


achieve their objectives without even having to fight. He promised that a more positive military stance would have the support of his constituents, who wanted “a plain war, not a disguised”, and would be happy to pay for it as long as their other grievances of “monopolies and exactions” were redressed.24 In the course of his efforts to downplay the notion of an independent parliamentary view of foreign policy, Conrad Russell once suggested that Nyell was an exception among MPs in being prepared to commit his constituency in this manner, and that in any case no one in the House was ready to go as far as to tell the king what they wanted.25 This, of course, is rather splitting hairs. The MPs were effectively committing their constituents and telling the king what they wanted simply by expressing themselves in debate. But even on the formality, Russell is wrong. In one source, which he appears to have overlooked, it was reported that Nyell specifically moved “an intimation to the King of our opinion”.26 Nyell was happy to speak for the House as well as for his constituents in Devon, knowing full well that they shared a common view. A similar point can be made regarding another prominent “warrior” who we have already met, the ex-Totnes and now East Retford MP, Sir Nathaniel Rich. Russell has suggested that in the foreign affairs debate “only Rich, with a proposal that any league the king might make should be confirmed by Act of Parliament, had offered any move in the direction of parliamentary control of foreign policy”.27 In fact, in a section of his speech that Russell once again seems to have overlooked, Rich made a much broader and more significant point. He began to suggest that in effect they should vary their offers of financial support according to the level of acceptability of the king’s decisions about foreign policy. Rich, who was in a position to know, said in fact that their commitment to extra supply at the recess had been made on condition that James undertook the general war against Spain and Catholicism that they desired. He therefore proposed that before voting any subsidy they should “notify the King what grounds and reasons we have laid in this business”.28 Moreover, it may be said that in effect the House accepted this point of view. When they voted just one subsidy, for the limited objective of supporting the king’s policy of recovering the Palatinate without engaging in a general war against Spain, the Commons were implicitly accepting Rich’s distinction, and recognising that the king was not intending to undertake the kind of war that the House really desired. They were not so much impeding the course of foreign policy as trying to broaden and invigorate it.

96


The Exeter MPs John Prowse and Ignatious Jourdain were like Richard Wyn in that they are not known to have spoken in the foreign affairs debate in the House, but nevertheless wrote letters about it, and expressed a powerful anti-Spanish sentiment. Prowse explained to the Corporation in Exeter that the subsidy had been voted to regain the Palatinate for its rightful rulers from the jaws of their “invertirable” enemy.29 He then noted the arrival of some Dutch envoys, and regretted that he could say nothing about the prospects for this embassy because the king was still at Newmarket and had not yet received them. Correspondence and diary sources are full of this kind of implied criticism of government policy from men who did not have the status to express themselves in the House, or at least not to be recorded as having done so. The strength of these opinions among ordinary townspeople underlines once again what a sad misrepresentation it is to pretend that this kind of public initiative did not exist. The letters of Prowse’s fellow MP Ignatious Jourdain indicated that he too had some clearly formed ideas and information about foreign affairs. He spoke of the activities of “that noble general Sir Horace Vere”, who was commanding a small contingent of Englishmen in the Continental arena. Since Jourdain wrote two days later than Prowse, he was able to inform the Corporation that the House had by that time decided to send the king a petition asking that war should be declared against Spain, and that prince Charles should marry none but of his own religion.30 Jourdain clearly welcomed parliament’s expression of outright hostility to Spain, who he referred to as “the common enemy”. It was a good illustration of how an anti-Spanish stance could be perceived by the public at large as the appropriate national foreign policy. And these townsmen seem to have felt no compunction about parliament offering this view to the king in a manner that in conventional terms might have been regarded as pretentious to say the least. Both the content and the fact of the petition proved completely unacceptable to the king, and there ensued the dispute over the right of free speech for which the 1621 parliament is most famous. James saw the Commons’ petition as a direct contradiction of his position on foreign affairs – a matter in which they had no right to meddle at all. In his messages to the House he told them that these were questions far beyond their proper scope. He said that he had only invited them to treat of the issue in the context of providing financial support for his efforts regarding the Palatinate. It was not a license for them to put forward an alternative policy. That was to usurp his prerogative, and assume the principal power in the state. He threatened to deal forcibly with


the perpetrators.31 In response, the Commons penned a protestation justifying their stance, for the record, in the Commons Journal. They asserted that they possessed, as an “inheritance”, the right to freely debate the “arduous and urgent affairs concerning the King, state and defence of the realm”, and to do so without fear of punishment or interference.32 Most recent historians have tended to play down the constitutional significance of this confrontation, and have felt that James probably exaggerated the problem. Conrad Russell in particular appeared to think that the Commons were not really inclined to challenge the crown in any way, and were not making new claims but rather mounting a lastditch defence of their privilege of free speech as a bare minimum guarantee of future debate.33 Robert Zaller reflected the traditional view that the dispute did herald important changes. He recognised that notwithstanding the references to the authority of the past, the protestation contained the implication of radical action – especially in the claim not only to treat of all matters, but to “bring to a conclusion the same”.34 Zaller was perhaps placing too much formal weight on the words, but he came much closer to capturing the force of what was at stake. This can be clarified in two complementary aspects. The idea that these rights were “inherited” was the form in which the Commons had, since 1604, began to assert a position held independently of the royal grace. And this was a notion that James of course regarded as anti-monarchical in itself. Equally crucial was the fact that the independent right of free speech was being advanced in a context where they had just conceived and proposed a foreign policy of their own. In other words, both in principle and in practice, the Commons were beginning to assume the freedom to establish an autonomous concept of the public interest, even in the highest matters of state. When James ripped the protestation out of the Journal he was, quite understandably, rejecting that ambition. But it was not within his power to prevent it from being held. Nor was it within his power to prevent his subjects from recording their views in private. One of the most cogent and continuous “popular” commentaries on foreign affairs at this time is in the diaries of Walter Yonge of Honiton.35 Much like Sir Nathaniel Rich, Yonge based his view of foreign policy on two principal considerations. One was his Puritanism, and the other was his commercial interest as a merchant. His father had been one of the pioneers of the earliest English expeditions to the coast of Africa. Yonge maintained that interest, and also became concerned with ventures to the New World. He invested in the Dorchester Company, a predecessor of the Massachusetts Bay Company, which sought to combine profitable trading with the encouragement of

98


a Godly colony. Significantly, his interest in foreign affairs long predated the outbreak of the crisis of the 1620s. Although he had only been a child during Elizabeth’s wars, he inherited an obsessive antipathy to the power and ambitions of Spain. This appeared consistently in his diary from 1610 onwards. In 1614 he was already monitoring the growing tensions in Holland and France as the final showdown between Protestantism and the Habsburgs began to take shape. And in 1619 Yonge noted the fateful election of the Count Palatine as king of Bohemia.36 From that time onwards, Yonge’s diary became much preoccupied with the developing conflict, and it is not necessary to look very hard between the lines to recognise his dissatisfaction with the government’s failure to take a more forceful and effective approach. In 1620 he noted that Spinola had occupied the Palatinate, and that the king had sent Digby to “ask for it back”.37 In June 1621, as we have seen, Yonge cited at length parliament’s declaration offering financial support if the king decided to pursue a more determined policy. But the government did not change tack until it was too late, and Yonge’s diary became a long catalogue of national inactivity and humiliation. “All the talk is of a Spanish fleet; and doubted it is for England, and yet we make no preparation to resist them.”38 The yearning for the simple certainties of 1588 is very apparent here. It seems that Yonge was determined to have an Armada to fight. This may have been wishful thinking, but it did not mean that his general viewpoint was completely unrealistic. On the contrary, it is easy to see how people may have thought that the situation seemed to call for something akin to Elizabeth’s policy of attacking Spanish naval, commercial and financial power at sea, and undermining them in the Low Countries as far as possible. G.M. Trevelyan suggested fully a century ago that the real criticism that can be levelled at the “parliamentary” view of foreign policy is that it seemed to involve a rather facile assumption that a successful sea war against Spain would of itself induce the disgorging of the Palatinate, and this failed to take proper account of the continental aspect of Habsburg power.39 In truth, however, we shall see that the Commons’ approach was determined in part by a quite judicious assessment of the sheer difficulty of recovering the Palatinate by direct military means. The certainty was that the policies that were tried did not succeed. “We give the Palatinate up as wholly lost,” noted Yonge in 1622.40 Some of the humiliations did at least lend themselves to a touch of humour: The Spanish Match was not progressing well. “It is reported that the Infanta of Spain hath retired herself into a monastery the same day that Prince Charles was promised to see her.”41 Yonge added that he thought


that this story was probably apocryphal, though in actual fact it was not too far from the truth. It seems that Charles really was obliged at times to resort to scaling walls to get a glimpse of his prospective bride. It became all too evident that the Spanish were not serious about the proposal – they were playing for time, trying to ensure that they avoided the consequences of English hostility for as long as possible. Charles and Buckingham had the consolation that notwithstanding the failure of their mission, they were received home as heroes. Yonge recorded the collapse of the Spanish match with obvious relief, and welcomed the subsequent though rather overdue consensus of king and parliament.42 The process by which in 1624 a certain degree of joint momentum was achieved has received good, balanced treatment in some modern studies.43 Others, however, have exploited the fact that executive decision-making in foreign affairs was the sole province of the king, and have sought to create the impression that the inspiration for the Spanish war came from Charles and Buckingham.44 This interpretation seems to defy the most obvious logic. After all, the Prince and the Duke, at their own instigation, had just spent a long hot summer doing their best to implement the preferred royal policy of a dynastic alliance with Spain, to the obvious horror of public opinion in England. Charles and Buckingham had a change of heart when it became apparent that they had been duped by the Spanish. And they could at least take advantage of the fact that by returning unengaged, they had, for the moment, made themselves extremely popular among the English. They were therefore happy to arbitrate between king and people, and to try to bring James round to the view that Spain was indeed the enemy. It was not an easy task. The king remained reluctant to break with the Habsburgs, and was not above trying to put the policy of appeasement back together again. And since James’s prerogative in these affairs could not simply be overridden, for much of the time Buckingham could only offer the Commons hints and hopes. When the Duke had done everything he could to foster the impression that, suitably and generously financed, the king would follow the desired course, the subsidy debate began, though everyone was “so wary and cautious on all sides as if they were to treat with enemies”.45 The king had not countenanced Buckingham’s initiative without demanding a heavy price – an unprecedented grant of six subsidies. The Commons sought ways of making this levy manageable and acceptable, and began to edge closer to the radical position of stipulating how the money was to be used. It was an understandable concern. They could not trust the king’s instincts.

100


The debate produced a fascinating series of speeches in which MPs displayed a fair degree of wisdom. Their general preference was plainly for a naval war with Spain, partly on the basis that they did not regard a Palatinate campaign as practicable. Sir John Eliot, sitting for Newport in Cornwall, suggested that war with Spain was the most effective course, and would actually generate wealth.46 Sir Francis Seymour wanted the enemy and the war aim to be made clear, and thought that a Palatinate campaign was beyond their resources. They should focus on a naval war and aiding the Low Countries.47 Sir Edward Coke confirmed that the latter formula would be acceptable to the constituencies. The Palatinate was beyond their reach, but he hoped to “live to see the king of Spain lose his Indies”.48 William Nyell, in typical fashion, threatened that if the Palatinate were not soon surrendered, the Spanish fleet would be swept from the seas.49 He had apparently had his hopes raised, perhaps a little too high, by the prospect of a coordinated campaign. In truth, the king was not yet on board. But the concept was very revealing of Nyell’s own position. This was where Dartmouth came in, back in 1584, with the navy sweeping the seas clear of opposition to English traders. It was a very simple and powerful proposition – that symbiosis between sea power and trade. It was the basis on which a worldwide commercial empire was to be built in the quarter millennium after 1650. But it was a vision to which James never gave any sign of buying in, at least not in the form in which it was currently on offer. There was a certain irony in this, since in a way it met some of his own inclinations, for another advantage of the concept was that it avoided the slur of overweening military ambition. James was not however to be convinced. And in this situation, it was not easy to gain the confidence of the Commons. In the end they voted just three subsidies. Sir John Saville, following the precedent set by Sir Nathaniel Rich, wished that it could have been more – but that would have required a different policy. He thought that the constituencies would be unimpressed by the concession that parliamentary commissioners were to account for the money. That would only really be to the purpose if they were also empowered to decide precisely how it was to be spent.50 This was the truly radical aspect of parliament’s position. The committee drafting the Commons’ declaration went so far as to suggest that if the king “were engaged in a real war” further assistance would be forthcoming.51 In accepting the offer of subsidy, James gave no indication whatever that he was contemplating the course of action that the Commons clearly desired. But he was induced to make other concessions that would ease and quicken the passage of the supply bill. On 23 April 1624


he unexpectedly accepted in full the Commons’ Petition on Religion, which sought guarantees of strict enforcement of the laws against Jesuit and recusant activity. Since the petition had also underlined the closure of the treaties with Spain, it was particularly reassuring to have the king’s endorsement. John Prowse, MP for Exeter, echoed the feeling of the Commons in his letter to the Corporation, recommending the king’s “most noble answer. worthy the keeping in the City’s Chamber”.52 This did not, however, resolve the underlying problem. Although the Commons could now feel reasonably well assured that the prince’s engagement to the Spanish Infanta was no more, they were no nearer getting what they really wanted – a fully-fledged engagement with the Spanish navy. In fact it soon became clear that James did not feel that the lapse in negotiations meant a complete breakdown in relations with the Habsburgs. He was still convinced that remaining generally at peace with Spain offered the best chance of making progress with the matter of the Palatinate. In the continental arena he operated by proxy, sending a tragically inadequate force of pressed men to assist the current Protestant champion Count Mansfield. Walter Yonge was obliged to note that half of the English contingent was destroyed by disease, and the remainder quite sensibly deserted to Spinola.53 It must be said that when the war with Spain was finally set on foot, with Charles’s accession, it did not bring the hoped for transformation of English prospects. It is not easy to know why a sea war proved so difficult to put into execution in 1625, when it seems to have been reasonably effective, in its own terms, almost whenever else it was tried. Perhaps this was the sense in which the inclination of the royal government became important, and there could never be proper coordination without true conviction at the centre of authority. Or perhaps there had been so much delay in getting the policy adopted that the optimum moment and the greatest momentum had passed. Finding and seizing the Spanish treasure fleet was always a somewhat speculative venture, for which a good deal of fortune was required. But there ought to have been no real problem in setting up at least a semblance of Elizabethan glory by taking the ill-defended town of Cadiz, Spain’s most important supply centre. Yet the expedition became a cause of humiliation. Walter Yonge was obliged to record – “Our fleet returned home from Cadiz, and did nothing.”54 Some obvious differences from the Elizabethan effort of thirty years before can be identified. That success had been achieved by a navy which had possessed a particular blend of rigour and imagination, and had carried a force of seasoned veterans. In contrast, it seems clear that the Caroline fleet was very ill prepared in every way. In fact, to

102


satisfy diplomatic agreements, it set sail when only half of its strength was ready, and of that, half again perished for lack of provisions. Some English forces did manage to reach the walls of the city, only to discover that there were no pickaxes available to begin the work of undermining them, and there was not sufficient food to sustain the action further. Russell thought that the Commons should share the blame for this fiasco for not agreeing to vote additional supply at the Oxford session of the 1625 parliament.55 But the real problem in this respect seems to have been that the Commons were not properly briefed or consulted when the original supply was voted.56 And in any case the limitation of resources can hardly excuse or explain the almost unbelievable lack of judgement and organisation that was revealed in the Cadiz expedition. The political results were equally catastrophic. Whereas some kind of success at Cadiz might have bound king and Commons together for future advances in the common cause, the trauma of humiliating failure created a bone of contention from which the campaign never really recovered. The Commons were in no doubt as to who should bear the blame for the disaster, and it brought them into direct confrontation with the king. Walter Yonge noted that by March of 1626, parliament had decided that the responsibility for failure was to be laid at the feet of the king’s favourite and leading minister, the Duke of Buckingham, and the Commons initiated charges of impeachment against him.57 Yonge thus had also to note that three months later the king dissolved parliament because they would not “treat of subsidies” or give up their pursuit of Buckingham.58 As we shall see, these tendencies were part of what Charles quickly came to regard as an “attempt to undermine the foundations of the monarchy”.59 The war proved a bitter disappointment to the representatives of the West Country boroughs. By 1626, disillusionment showed plainly in the speeches of William Nyell’s successor as principal MP for Dartmouth, Roger Mathew. As the failure of the war at sea became apparent, he complained regularly about the costs and burdens of it, and testified to the government’s inability to protect trade.60 This was the precise opposite of the hoped-for effect, and became the basis of the West Country critique of naval policy over the next decade. Mathew also had a specific view of why things were going wrong. He thought that the main problem was a lack of focus, vigour and determination. Thus he criticised the general level of commitment among naval captains, while at the same time defending those whom he believed to be setting a better example, like the Dartmouth captain John Plumleigh, who at the ill-fated Isle of Rhe expedition had “fired those ships where none other


dared follow”.61 At least the men of Dartmouth were upholding the true Elizabethan tradition! Mathew was personalising the general perception that the war was not being pursued with the appropriate degree of conviction and competence. He extended his criticism of naval leadership to the highest levels of command. It is clear in fact that the West Country representatives were very forward in the attack on the Duke of Buckingham. When the Commons’ attempts to impeach the Lord Admiral reached the stage of preparing charges, Mathew came forward to remind the House of one particular indictment which he thought was in danger of being overlooked. He recalled how the animosity of the French had been needlessly provoked by the detaining of their ship the Saint Pierre.62 The MPs of Exeter were also ready to provide ammunition for the attack on Buckingham in much the same way as those from Dartmouth.63 The war with France was the crowning disaster of 1620s foreign policy. It stemmed, like so many other problems, from crucial misjudgements made at the end of James’s reign. Prince Charles, on the rebound, was to marry Henrietta Maria of France. The marriage was to prove a happy one. But the cost was very high. The terms of the agreement provided not only for a relaxation of the laws against recusants in England, but also included an incredibly ill-advised promise to provide ships to assist the French crown in its action against the Huguenot revolt, centred on La Rochelle. This position soon proved to be completely untenable. And the alliance did not in any case produce much in the way of effective common action in the war against Spain. Charles and Buckingham therefore seized on the solution of simply reversing the policy and entering into war with France as part of a general commitment to Protestantism. Thus it was that English ships found themselves sailing back to La Rochelle, but this time on the opposite side of the contest. The circumstances and outcome of the expedition had, in other ways, a more familiar ring. The force was supplied with wheat, but not equipped with the means to bake it. They also found that the scaling ladders were too short for the task that confronted them. And there seems to have been a shortage of officers to direct the proceedings. The English forces were at the mercy of the French army while trying to re-embark, and less than half of them returned home. Certain justifications could be claimed for the war with France. There was an argument of religious solidarity and consistency, and even something rather noble in proposing to assist the French Protestant minority against the attempts to eradicate it. And it is only with hindsight that we can see the single-minded effectiveness of Oliver Cromwell’s

104


sophisticated pragmatism in allying with France in order to undermine the principal Catholic power of Spain. Nevertheless, the war with France must be taken as sign and symbol of the poor judgement and extraordinary incompetence that bedevilled English foreign and military policy in the 1620s. It took a rare degree of bad luck or bad management to find oneself at war with Europe’s two greatest powers, and two greatest enemies, simultaneously. This was the singular achievement of Charles and Buckingham. The MPs of Dartmouth and Exeter had been happy to support and indeed endorse the war with Spain, at least at the beginning, though the supposed advantages had proved somewhat illusory. There were few, even theoretical, benefits of war with France. It seems to have been regarded as directly detrimental to all West Country trading interests. Studies of the patterns and fluctuations of trade have given a clear indication why this was so. The disruption of international relations in the late 1620s, and especially the outbreak of hostilities with France, brought a sharp decline in English wine imports (as in the associated cloth export trade). Both the overall figures for wine imports through the southern ports and the particular figures for Exeter showed an unmistakable drop during these years. The evidence suggests strongly that this was mainly due to the breakdown of trade with France, for the effect on Spanish trade was less significant – it began at a much lower level, and suffered a much smaller reduction.64 This seems to underline why so many English merchants and MPs were happiest focusing their more belligerent energies on Spain. But there was of course an even more important reason. War with Spain had another dimension of projected global economic advantage which was not at that time to be obtained from conflict with France. The disasters of the French war, in conception and execution, precipitated a final breakdown of relations between king and parliament, and confirmed the complete ineffectiveness of English policy. The apportioning of blame for a unique decade of military failure has been contentious. Historians like Russell would see it essentially from the monarch’s point of view, and assert that it was the king’s prerogative to define the basis of foreign policy and the duty of his subjects to provide support, which they had conspicuously failed to do. Charles I at least would have agreed with that point of view, though with one important difference. Charles almost certainly regarded himself as having been led into the war by parliament, and then deprived of the funds to sustain it. The tendency of parliament to offer more criticism than supply may certainly have appeared perverse in that light.


On the other hand, we have seen that MPs had a quite realistic view of the difficulties of a Palatinate campaign, and constantly sought a clear focus on a sea war with Spain. This might have received more financial support, and achieved greater success, if it had been pursued with consistency and commitment right from the beginning in 1620. To debate the details of responsibility, and the precise rights and wrongs of the way that Court and Commons dealt with one another, can be a rather arid and fruitless exercise. It can be similarly inconclusive to pose the question in terms of how much constitutional radicalism was shown in the various moves towards parliamentary monitoring of the expenditure and conduct of the war.65 These are best seen as indicators of an underlying development. For the clear implication of what has been said in this chapter is that there is another angle of interpretation that is more instructive. The above pages have indicated that the crucial factor was the existence among the nation’s representatives of a very powerful if generalised idea of what the basis of policy should be. In other words, there had now arisen a specific public view of foreign affairs, which had a persistent life of its own, and could be held independently of the crown. This naturally manifested itself through the representative capacity of parliament, which was duly assuming a right to promote public preferences and monitor the balance of costs and projected benefits. This chapter has further suggested that an important function of the popular foreign policy was that it had a very strong and distinctively commercial character, in which the merchants of the West Country had, of course, a significant stake. The military and political failures of the 1620s were the most obvious consequences of the fiscal and administrative dysfunction that had arisen in the English kingdom. It is true that this had already begun to make itself apparent in the final decade of Elizabeth’s reign. But this had not prevented her foreign policy from being regarded as, overall, a considerable success. And this was because it had been pursued consistently in concert with the dominant prejudices of her people. This in fact became the greatest problem of all for James and Charles, for it had established a popular tradition. Its very strength goes a long way to explain the reluctance of James to embrace the force of it. It also explains the ease with which it was revived by Oliver Cromwell. It sat ill with a Stuart regime always anxious to shore up monarchical authority. And this, more than any gentry localism, was the principal cause of the dysfunction in the workings of the state. It would not be until the end of the seventeenth century that this split in the body politic would be

106


finally healed, when parliament found itself in a position to ensure that money and policy did not get too far out of step again. In the meantime, in the 1620s, matters went from bad to worse. Since he was more than ever in need of money, the king was obliged to resort to arbitrary financing of an increasingly contentious nature. It was not accepted passively. In fact the political classes of Devon and Somerset had been in the forefront of the articulated opposition to unparliamentary levies ever since the Benevolence of 1614. They objected to it consistently on the basis that their right in their own property was safeguarded by their right to approve money-raising through their consent in parliament.66 This sentiment was most concisely expressed by Walter Yonge, in respect of the Benevolence of 1622. Yonge said “that he affected the good of the Palatine as much as any man, and would give in a legal course by Parliament, if it were half his estate”.67 Yonge was probably overestimating his own generosity, even in a parliamentary way. But the principle on which he was insisting could not have been plainer or firmer. In 1626, Devon was once again among the counties most prominent in coordinating resistance to the demands and in promoting the idea that parliament should be recalled.68 Walter Yonge continued to voice his disapproval of unparliamentary taxation. He recorded the opposition to the Forced Loan in various counties and noted the prosecution of Loan refusers.69 He kept reports of the case and indicated his belief that the king was infringing past judgements and statutes in pursuing the trials.70 Yonge also set great store by the Petition of Right through which the parliament of 1628 sought to outlaw the practices of arbitrary taxation and imprisonment, martial law and billeting.71 And his county town of Exeter was among the boroughs that preserved copies of the Petition of Right in 1628.72 We have less evidence of the views of the people of Nottinghamshire on foreign affairs, though as already noted, the voters around Nottingham were said to have been much exercised by the question of the Palatinate in the election of 1620. We also know that public opinion in the county was closely in line with the West Country as regards the other aspects of pro-parliamentary sentiment that arose in connection with the crisis. Walter Yonge’s views about methods of finance were certainly shared here. Again, the references are brief, but they are nevertheless among the most illuminating that we possess. The representatives who actively opposed crown policy, like Sir Thomas Hutchinson, clearly enhanced their reputation in the region. Local opinion became visibly politicised on the issue. When the Benevolence of 1626 was


demanded, the county authorities appear to have been aware in advance that people would not be amenable to it, but would instead take their cue from the oppositionist stance of the recent parliament. And so it proved. The Nottinghamshire JPs had to report to the Privy Council that despite their best efforts to persuade people of the necessity, “the generality refuse to give otherwise than by Parliament, the ordinary and usual way as they alleged”. The same problem arose with the Forced Loan in 1627. If this time the government’s agents had more success, it was apparently only by acknowledging “the parliamentary way” in other respects. For it seems that the Nottinghamshire subsidy men were reconciled to the payment by the assurance that their cooperation would induce the king to allow more frequent parliaments, and not limit them to his own purposes.73 This is a striking illustration of the importance that the localities now placed on a regular provision of parliamentary services. In its own way this came to acquire a significance as broad as the more conventional great matters of state.

5 Legislative Ambitions Frustrated: 1614–1640

Parliaments without legislation: 1614 and 1621. Parliament as a point of contact between representatives. Local interests becoming common interests. The growing demand for a legislative programme, and the decreasing opportunity. As already indicated in previous chapters, the national-political concerns of the West Country boroughs did not stem entirely or even principally from great military and constitutional crises. We have seen how from 1604 to 1610 a very vigorous constitutional interest in parliament could derive simply from local economic issues. Similarly in the 1620s, political perspectives were not essentially the product of international events. At least equally crucial in their immediate importance and their long-term constitutional effects were the day-to-day “bread and butter” interests of the boroughs in these same 1620s parliaments. It was not simply that the initiatives of the localities continued to be placed in a national dimension. Nor was it just that the tension between patent and parliament was in many ways powerfully underlined. More important still was the growing importance of the legislative function in itself. Not only did demand for it continue to grow, but the constituencies were coming to regard it as a continuous governmental requirement. The significance of this was not lessened by the fact that the facility was effectively being withdrawn or withheld by the crown. On the contrary, it was during the 1620s (and of course during the personal rule of the 1630s) that the unsatisfied public demand for parliamentary services became a grievance in its own right. This indeed was how the socioeconomic need for parliaments could acquire a political force. 108

Legislative Ambitions Frustrated: 1614–1640

109

When parliament met in 1620, the domestic disputes of the previous two assemblies appeared to have been stilled, as the pressure of the impending crisis abroad produced a mood of at least attempted cooperation at home. The great impositions disputes of 1610 and 1614 seemed to have been laid aside, or that is what historians have tended to suppose. It is certainly true that the impositions controversy did not recur in its classic and explicit form. Although some members, including Barnstaple’s John Delbridge, sought to draw a connection between impositions and the trade depression, the complaint stopped short of a challenge to the king’s power.1 But in one sense the issue was still very much alive. For not far beneath the surface, the same constitutional energies were at work, in a parallel course. Between 1614 and 1621 a spate of royal patents of monopoly disinterred a bone of contention which had already been of considerable public concern before the impositions dispute even began. The issue of monopolies, almost by definition, represented that same polarity between parliament and patent that has been outlined in the earlier sections of this study. What made the 1621 assembly uncontroversial, at least at the start, was the king’s need to foster the appearance of consensus with his people in order to strengthen his hand in foreign affairs. James and some of his ministers were therefore prepared to acknowledge that monopolies were a justified grievance, and to allow and even instigate action against some of the most hated patentees. This should not lead us to underestimate the significance of the Commons’ position. Recent historians have tended to downplay the notion that the tensions of the early 1620s indicate developing divisions along the lines of court versus country, or crown versus a parliamentary opposition.2 Once again, the obsession with concrete categories threatens to conceal the importance of underlying movements. When we keep in mind the fact that monopolies and impositions were two aspects of the same parliamentary aversion to “arbitrary” exactions, then the attack on monopolies can be seen as a crucial stage in the hardening of the perceived distinction between patent and representative regulation. It soon became clear that the attempt to defuse the issue was only partially successful. The Commons happily accepted the sacrifices they were offered, like the hapless patentee for inns, Sir Giles Mompesson; then they widened their investigation to include all and any patents. And when they settled down to their “proper business” of legislation, the priority on the list of bills was a general statute to outlaw patents of monopoly. This, said Sir Nathaniel Rich, was the measure on which the “hope and expectation of the country” was set.3 Rich was an MP

110


without direct local commitments – a career politician and businessman related to the powerful political family of the Earl of Warwick. Rich resided mainly in London and in Essex, but it was not until later in his career that he was associated with a constituency in that county. Before then, he served various constituencies as an outsider, and they happened to involve both the areas on which this study focuses. As already mentioned, he sat for Totnes in 1614, and in 1621 he was sitting for East Retford in Nottinghamshire (as he sought to do again in 1624). His lack of a stable local attachment was reflected in the character of his concerns and contributions in the House. Rich’s arena was always national (and indeed international and colonial). This makes his use of the word “country” especially interesting. It seems to illustrate the way in which the concept of a local country or constituency could broaden out into a national dimension. Rich was expressing a collective nationwide concern about monopolies. Looking at the matter through the other end of the telescope, we can see that this was indeed the issue on which most boroughs can be shown to have expressed their particular concern, with the West Country boroughs prominent amongst them. John Prowse, for instance, obtained an order from the Commons that proceedings under the alehouse patent should be stopped. His fellow Exeter MP Ignatious Jourdain gave information to the House about extortions in the city under the patent for peddlers. The current Totnes MP Sir Edward Giles added his voice to the general cry against monopolies. William Nyell of Dartmouth described the town’s principal grievances as “monopolies and exactions”.4 And the town of Bridgewater obtained a copy of “the proclamation for the apprehending of Mumperson”,5 which was the product of parliament’s impeachment of Sir Giles Mompesson. Nottingham Corporation also acquired a record of the actions taken against Mompesson, and the monopolies for inns and gold thread.6 Monopolies were thus in every sense a national issue. They affected almost every locality in very similar ways, and especially in the fact that they usually involved demands for money. It has been rightly said that “the whole land cried a single grievance: the abuse of patents”.7 Parliament was thus addressing a general public interest and attempting a national solution. Moreover, it was doing so in a political context which implied that this kind of administration by patent was really not acceptable at all, and these things should properly always be subject to the representative authority of the Commons. As the merchants of Exeter were to phrase it, any patent of monopoly was “a business worthy the entertainment of the House of Parliament”.8 It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the way that


111

the cumulative effect of resistance to monopolies, impositions and such like expedients was to foster the idea of a parliamentary alternative. In the case of other legislative initiatives, as already suggested, the incidence of the grievance might be less than universal, but the context of the problem and the solution proposed might still in a crucial sense be national. Thus some of the West Country boroughs, such as Dartmouth, Exeter, Plymouth and Bridgewater, had particular legislative proposals to put forward in 1621, but these always involved interests shared with other boroughs, other counties, other regions, and sometimes, again, with the kingdom as a whole. A good example was the Exeter cloth bill. We have seen above that the drive for what the merchant clothiers defined as improved manufacturing standards became a persistent aim of legislative initiatives following the great flurry of socio-economic legislation in the 1530s. Exeter had such a bill to promote in 1621. It was “for the better making of serges and perpetuanos”, and was introduced by the city’s experienced and successful legislator from the first Jacobean parliament, John Prowse.9 This has sometimes been referred to as a Devon measure, and the connection is not too surprising since Exeter was the principal marketing centre for Devon’s cloth manufacturers. The attempts of Totnes Corporation to promote cloth legislation through the good offices of their larger neighbour have already been described. Achieving legislation for “quality control” in the cloth industry had in fact been a regular brief of Exeter merchants throughout the Elizabethan period.10 The 1621 bill, however, had one important difference, it concerned a new type of cloth. In the earlier period the Exeter merchants had dealt predominantly in the Devonshire kersey; and the legislative regulation achieved in that respect seems to have been regarded as satisfactory. But by 1621 the kersey was being supplanted by the serge or perpetuano (everlasting), a lighter but hard-wearing cloth which was becoming especially important in the crucial French market. The Exeter merchants had first shown their concern to increase controls in respect of this cloth when they tried to impose regulations locally in 1609 and 1610. But they were never able to exert the influence that they desired over the country cloth manufacturers outside the city, who produced the bulk of their supply. The merchants’ ambitions for control should probably not be taken as a sign that they were attempting to impede the advance of the new forms of rural industry. If anything it may be another indication that their main interest was in managing its development for their own purposes. What is certain and concerns us more is the growing importance of parliamentary legislation as the proven and

112


effective way of dealing with cloth-industry problems generally. And the 1621 parliament appeared to be the first convenient opportunity for the Exeter merchants to make use of that facility. The Exeter cloth initiative was in fact a perfect illustration of the various ways in which the demand for parliamentary law could have national implications. For one thing, it demonstrated the national framework in which such proposals had to be set. Although Exeter was clearly playing the leading role in the presentation of this bill, there is a copy of the text of the proposal in the State Papers which shows the general context in which it was being placed. There is no particular mention of Exeter, or even of Devon. The purpose of the bill is described as being to protect a trade which is of general benefit to the commonwealth, by giving regulatory powers to “any city or market town where such serges and perpetuanos shall be sold”. In the same set of State Papers there are two documents relating to the background of the bill which substantiate the broad national context in which it was set. One of the documents is a West Country response to official enquiries about the problem saying that it would be solved if Exeter and Taunton were given the same kind of regulatory powers as those enjoyed by the corporations of Colchester and Canterbury. The other is a report on the problem by Sir Robert Heath based on evidence taken not only from all the towns already mentioned but also from Norwich.11 Here again we see the broad perspectives that the parliamentary arena naturally induced. Whether or not these initiatives served local and parochial interests, they had to be related as widely as possible. This bill was still nominally an Exeter initiative in 1624 when John Prowse presented it again.12 But the broader frame of reference is still apparent in the make-up of the committee, which included the knights and burgesses of Norfolk, Suffolk, Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, Essex, Hampshire and London. The measure thus gives a good illustration of the way that the process of parliamentary legislation naturally promoted a national perspective. These boroughs were clearly aware of their respective positions on an issue which in some sense affected them all, and one of the reasons that they were aware of it was precisely because their representatives met and compared notes in parliament. Parliament is often talked about as a “point of contact” between king and people. But perhaps the more distinctive and eventually more significant function of the English parliament was as a point of contact between representatives of boroughs and counties the length and breadth of the kingdom, providing a framework within which national balances and


113

areas of consensus could be reached. This was the dynamic shape from which a self-defining public interest could evolve. There were, of course, also simple economic reasons for a nationwide conceptual framework to grow up in connection with cloth manufacture. It should not surprise us to find that cloth legislation was conceived in a national dimension, for the most notable aspect of the cloth trade in England was that it had developed in a national dimension. During the sixteentn century, cloth became England’s first significant manufactured export, and the importance of the commodity grew in tandem with the importance of London, through which the overwhelming bulk of it was marketed. The trade was largely channelled through the national capital and regulated most effectively through the national parliament. There were important cloth-manufacturing localities in every region of the kingdom, and they all operated in some kind of relationship to the power of the centre. The definitive form of regulation of the industry was parliamentary law. So the national-political implications of these legislative initiatives went far deeper than the mere technical or geographical range of the framework in which they operated. In fact, the Exeter cloth bill provides a particularly good illustration of the really crucial factors at work: the unique power of statute law, and (the central theme of the present chapter) the increasing need for legislative opportunities to be available when required – the necessity indeed for the legislative service to be made continuous. A previous measure of cloth legislation in 1606 had imposed statutory regulations on the sizes, composition and method of manufacture of kerseys. This act appears to have been quite successful. In fact, it was rather too successful for the liking of some of the country clothiers. It is a testament to the effectiveness of the measure, and of statute law in general, that those clothiers who preferred not to be subject to close regulation turned instead to the manufacture of new types of cloth, like the perpetuano, which were not covered by the statute. The Exeter merchants, for whose purposes quality control was considered essential, naturally sought a new statute to deal with the new situation. Their problem was of course that the opportunities for enacting legislation of any sort were becoming few and far between. The cloth bill was a perfectly realistic proposition, which could be confident of general support in the Commons, and it made some headway through the legislative process. But it was not destined to reach the statute book. In the event, the act of 1606 turned out to be the last such measure of cloth regulation before the Civil War. Statute law had proved itself to be the most effective, perhaps the only effective, kind of provision in

114


this field. But unfortunately for the Exeter merchants, and many others in a similar position, this facility was now being denied them. Another aspect of the need for the legislative process to be made more continuously available can be seen in a legislative initiative taken by the town of Bridgewater in 1621. On 13 November of that year, the Bridgewater receiver’s accounts recorded a payment to the town’s MP Roger Warre, “for drawing the books for a bill to be exhibited in the parliament for the long casey”.13 This did not, we can probably rest assured, refer to an item of fast food, but to an item of cloth. It seems that “casey” should be read as carsey or kersey, and that Bridgewater was seeking to gain exemption for this type of kersey from a series of new quality restrictions that were about to be imposed. They were in fact reacting to a bill introduced in the first session in 1621 to reinforce the 1606 statute for “the true making of cloth”. The 1606 act had, as we have seen, comprised a comprehensive attempt to establish standard sizes and qualities for every traditional variety of cloth manufacture throughout the kingdom. One of its provisions was that certain inferior types of wool could only be used for short cloths, of 12 yards in length. The follow-up bill before the House in the first session in 1621 declared that the 1606 act had been a success, but in certain particulars it needed to be supplemented. It therefore proposed, for instance, that “noiles”, a type of residue or short wool, should be included in the list of inferior wools. This, it seems, was what made the bill a threat to Bridgewater. Noiles, or in West Country parlance “pinnions”, were the principal components of the type of kersey with which Bridgwater was traditionally associated, and kerseys were normally 18 yards long.14 The town’s representatives had arrived at the first session of the 1621 parliament to be confronted by a measure of national legislation that would disallow their traditional manufacturing practices. They returned in the second session to seek their only real defence, further legislation to protect their interest. This provides an interesting glimpse into the other side of the coin of cloth regulation. The Bridgewater merchants felt themselves to be threatened by these particular quality controls. But they were prepared to try to deal with it in kind – that is, through parliamentary legislation. It would certainly be their most effective option, and they clearly thought that it was worth the effort. Perhaps, given more scope, they might even have succeeded. Parliament had quite a good record in allowing exceptions to the rule. But in 1621 the prospects for legislation of any kind turned out to be very limited. No one received satisfaction. The frustration, however, had a significance of its own. For like the Exeter bill, the Bridgewater initiative showed that as statute law became more and more


115

important as the arbiter of economic activity, so it became more and more necessary for the legislative process to be allowed to respond to problems and changes as and wherever they arose. As already indicated, not all West Country towns were at this time primarily interested in the cloth trade. Dartmouth, of course, was principally concerned with cod fishing in Newfoundland, and this was an interest which it shared with other important trading towns in Devon and Dorset. A rough estimate of how the trade was divided in the 1620s would give Dartmouth 40 per cent, Plymouth 30 per cent, Barnstaple 20 per cent, and various Dorsetshire towns 10 per cent between them. Nevertheless, the legislation which was sought by these boroughs in defence of this trade was from its very inception directly involved in the structures and perspectives of national politics. In 1621 the MP for Plymouth, John Glanville, introduced the bill for free fishing on the coasts of America.15 Dartmouth’s William Nyell was predictably the most prominent speaker in support of this bill, which he was to reintroduce himself in 1624.16 The bill was a reaction to a royal patent granted in November 1620, which authorised Sir Ferdinando Gorges to restrict and tax the fishing in Newfoundland to protect the interests of the New England colonists. This colonial dimension, and the connection with the question of “free trade”, meant that the issue would be fought out in the arena of national politics. It is, obviously, another very good illustration of how the widespread inclination towards free trade came into conflict with the government’s attempts to achieve administrative regulation by means of patents granted to companies or individuals. Dartmouth and Plymouth could take encouragement from the fact that the free trade lobby was still very much in the ascendant in the House of Commons. Still at the forefront of that lobby was Sir Edwin Sandys, whose radical stance in the impositions controversy had put him very definitely on the wrong side of the king. Sandys represented one of the Cinque Ports, with no direct interest in the Newfoundland trade. But much against James’s wishes, he was also clinging on to power in the Virginia Company, and it was in this capacity that he was prepared to give specific support to the free fishing bill. Sandys reassured the House by pointing out that the Virginia colonists had managed to get an adequate share of the fishing without the protection of a patent. He declared that the New England colonists should not require such protection either; the fishing should be free for all.17 Sandys’s endorsement was crucial in terms of reflecting sentiment in the Commons. But it was unlikely to sway the royal government, which continued to maintain that the interests

116


of the colonists needed protection. Secretary of State Sir Edward Calvert insisted that it was necessary to control the fishermen, who were “wonderful unruly”.18 The bill nevertheless went forward, with the strong backing of the House. The government probably felt that it could not reject the measure completely since it had agreed that in a general sense the problem of monopoly patents should be addressed. It suggested a compromise by which it would allow the bill in principle as long as it incorporated a proviso that would give the colonists priority choice of first place on the fishing grounds. This, said Calvert, was the most that they could offer. Unless the proviso was accepted, the bill would not receive the royal assent. To William Nyell, however, this still seemed to contradict the whole idea of free trade. He rejected the compromise, and declared that the colonists should be content with a level playing field: “they can take the first place now if they can get it”.19 Nyell was happy with a free-for-all in every sense of the term. His selfconfident belligerence no doubt served to reinforce Calvert’s view that the colonists needed protection; and although the Commons continued to support Nyell’s uncompromising position, the bill failed to reach the statute book. But the battle was not entirely lost. In 1624 the issue was still live and the Commons still hot on the trail of monopolies. The free fishing bill was revived, though it still had little chance of being passed by the king. The Commons did, however, find other ways of addressing the problem. The Committee of Grievances, with a brief to control the activities of monopolists, pressed the principal patentee, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, into accepting that notwithstanding the powers of restraint in his patent, he would hereafter allow the fishermen to “freely visit the coasts of Newfoundland and fish there without any interruption”. Having obtained this concession, the Commons seized the moment and declared free trade in the area. The merchants of Plymouth gratefully preserved a copy of the resolution: Thereupon it is resolved by the same House of Commons that the fishermen of England shall have free liberty of fishing on the said coasts of New England, with all the incidents necessary of drying their nets and salting and packing their fish. And it is secondly resolved that in the opinion of this House the clause in the said patent of confiscation of the ships and goods is void and against law. And the Plymouth representative added the note, “which said order is remaining in the town chest”.20 It was a striking illustration of the


117

kind of moral authority that representative regulation was attaining in the public mind. The Plymouth merchants were keeping this order for exactly the same reason that the Dartmouth merchants had kept their record of the impositions debate – it was a statement of what they wished to regard as the constitutional and legal position. And obviously it indicated the same confidence in the independent capacity of parliament to declare what that position was. The free fishing bill was reintroduced in all the remaining parliaments of the 1620s. But despite the continued and enthusiastic support of the Commons, it never reached the statute book. It could not overcome the government’s reservations about free trade or the crown’s lack of commitment to the legislative process. But the free traders were clearly not deterred. They regarded it as a matter of right, as well as of economic necessity, and they therefore kept bringing the proposal forward. With the resolution of 1624, the Commons had done the best they could in the circumstances. They had certainly made their position crystal clear. And the West Country interests accepted the effort and the intent gratefully. Such initiatives, though inconclusive in themselves, must indeed have done much to reinforce the idea of a parliamentary alternative to these greatly disliked aspects of royal government. The breadth of support for free fishing in the House probably included the MPs of Exeter. It has been noted above that Exeter had little direct interest in the Newfoundland cod fishing, and tended to have its own reservations about “free trade”, at least in the context of its French Company privileges. But in other respects, the city lined up in solidarity with its neighbours in the battle against monopolies. When called upon to state its position on the fishing issue, Exeter Corporation came down pretty firmly on the side of parliament rather than patent. In December 1623, the king had canvassed the Exeter merchants in the hope that they would invest in a share of the patent for the New England plantation and fishing. The response was decidedly underwhelming: It is conceived that the principal places for fishing is already granted unto certain patentees therefore we hold it a business worthy the entertainment of the House of Parliament, and if his Majesty should be pleased to recall the patents already granted, then we think it meet to purchase a part nevertheless that if the place do not prove fit for fishing, then it shall be lawful for us to fish in other places along the coast otherwise if we may not freely fish without paying, as of late many have done, it were better to leave the plantation to others.21

118


It was a sign of the times, for Exeter too was moving in a generally free trade direction. And there was yet another way in which the cod fishing issue demonstrated the solidarity of the national parliamentary interest against the application of patents. Although it was suggested above that the cod fishing in Newfoundland was only of direct concern to a handful of West Country ports, this was not really the whole picture. There were also cod fishing grounds to the north of Britain, around Iceland, worked largely from Kingston-upon-Hull, which had indeed been of importance long before Newfoundland began to be fully exploited. The merchants of Dartmouth were very aware of the Iceland fishing, and when necessary were pleased to relate their own interests to the context of the northern grounds. This can be seen, for instance, in a document preserved by the Corporation protesting against another threatened monopoly. It was an undated petition entitled “Reasons to induce his Sacred Majesty not to grant a patent to any one man for the making of traine oil”. The latter was a by-product of cod fishing, and a vital factor in making the trade profitable to the West Country merchants and fishermen. The petition naturally took a free trade stance, and suggested, with what now sounds like a touch of sarcasm, that since there was a statute in existence which made the fish free for everyone to take and sell, “it would be hard that we should not have the same freedom for the entrails and blubbers of the said fish, or the traine oil made thereof”. We may well detect the irreverent style of William Nyell in the phrasing. There is no doubt that the petition sought principally to defend local West Country control of the processing of the traine oil from the Newfoundland trade. But it also referred at several points to a common interest with the other branch of the traine oil industry in the north of the kingdom. It would of course also be typical of Nyell to recognise the national dimension. The petition asserted that the proposed patent would have the same detrimental effects on the trade in the north as it would in the west.22 We can suggest once again that it was the functioning of a uniform representative assembly that both enabled and obliged these boroughs to place their interests in a national framework. In parliament they could learn how other boroughs and counties felt on these issues. They could relate and balance their interests, and one thing they had certainly learned was that they could rely on a parliamentary consensus against patents of monopoly. This was how the public interest began to define itself. This was the crucial effect of parliament acting as a point of contact between the constituencies.


119

Just as Dartmouth and Plymouth had unsuspected allies in the fight for free fishing, so could they offer support to the clothing interests in their own battles against patents. In fact, William Nyell’s first recorded contribution to debate in the Commons in 1621 was an attack on the pretermitted customs on cloth, which he thought were largely to blame for the general trade depression which the kingdom was experiencing. He began by providing an estimate of the cost of these customs to clothing interests in Devon. Then he asked, “If so in one shire, what is it for the whole kingdom?” And boldly answering his own question, he suggested that it was “proportionable throughout England”.23 His adoption of a national frame of reference was reflected in the range of support he received in the House. He was seconded by one of the MPs from Yorkshire, and further endorsement came from one of the MPs from Berkshire Whether or not Nyell was right in supposing that these levies were the cause of the trade depression is not the most important issue here. Of more significance was the fact that his condemnation of them clearly commanded a broad consensus in the Commons. Indeed, in a sense, the House would be inclined to condemn them on principle because, like impositions, they were a form of customs duty raised without the formal representative consent of parliament. The common features of the cloth trade and the manner in which it was regulated and taxed became apparent again when the House considered a petition from the Cinque Ports against the London Merchant Adventurers. The petition was introduced by the Cinque Ports’ MP Sir Edwin Sandys, who said that the Merchant Adventurers had been given a patent for the sole export of cloth from the ports of the south-east, which were thus being “undone by monopolies”. William Nyell was no doubt delighted to have the chance to repay Sandys for his support over the free fishing bill, and moved that the business of dealing with the Cinque Ports petition “should precede all others”. On this occasion it was Nyell’s neighbouring MP from Totnes, Sir Edward Giles, who established the specific cross-country connection by asserting that this grievance also affected Dartmouth, and indeed every other port in the kingdom.24 In all these matters, it is apparent that the recurring tension between parliament and patent was more than just contingent. It clearly did reflect an increasingly critical distinction between taxation and regulation performed on the one hand by the king and his appointed patentees, and on the other, through the representative processes of the House of Commons. But the desire for representative regulation did not simply result in a growing polarity between differing assumptions about

120


the rights and wrongs of money raising. Issues were also arising about the very nature of government. The impression that the royal resort to patents and monopolies was as much a form of taxation as administration did nothing to enhance the crown’s credit in either sphere. The wrong governmental balance was being struck. Perhaps most significant of all was the growing gulf in perceptions over the practical need for parliament’s legislative service to be made more readily and reliably available. A difference of opinion was arising about where the constructive essence of government lay, and the king was in danger of being seen as obstructing it. The first sign of the general importance that MPs attached to parliament’s legislative work could be seen in the way that they talked about it not just in terms of particular proposals but as a collected “programme”, which was to be viewed in the context of the kingdom as a whole. As we shall see, they often appeared to be working on the assumption that even if all particular interests could not be directly satisfied, nevertheless, everyone would find some degree of satisfaction in the fact that a programme of legislation had been passed. This was partly because much legislation was, in any case, of general interest, but also partly because, even if a particular interest had not been immediately served, it had at least been weighed in the parliamentary balance, and might be addressed again in the not too distant future. Or so they might hope. This was clear, for instance, in the attitudes of MPs when, at the end of May 1621, the king’s announcement of an imminent recess made them fear that all the work they had done on an extensive legislative programme would not now come to fruition. To the king, it seems, this was a matter of relative unimportance. It was certainly not very high on his list of priorities. If the Commons could not get legislation through in the time he was happy to allow them to sit, this was not apparently felt to be his problem. The MPs, on the other hand, were desperately concerned about losing the legislative programme. King and Commons were moving in opposite directions on this issue. There was plainly a sense in which MPs were coming to regard legislation as a vital aspect of government, but the king was providing neither the initiative nor the opportunity for it. Sir Edwin Sandys thought that “the eyes of all the kingdom are upon us. They stand expecting, and gazing after the good that we will bring them”. But he feared that the bills that they could complete in the time left would not satisfy the constituencies.25 John Delbridge of Barnstaple feared the disappointment of the country so much that he


121

would, he said, “rather never have gone home, than to go home in this manner”. William Nyell thought that it was vital to have something to take back to the country: “The matter of trade stands in a miserable state, though we cannot do what we would let us do what we can for the country’s good.”26 Nyell apparently regarded the trade depression as the prime area of general concern for parliamentary legislation in 1621. With the sudden recess, they would not now be able to even attempt to address that, but he urged that they should nevertheless pass as many bills as they could, for a legislative programme of some kind, he thought, “will satisfy the country”.27 It is of interest to ask exactly what bills Nyell thought could be rushed through at this stage. Conrad Russell thought that the problem for the Commons was “their own failure to complete any satisfactory programme of legislation”, and that they should have taken the opportunity to clear as much as they could in the remaining week which the king had allowed them.28 But the most optimistic assessment of the number of bills that might have been completed before the recess was 17, basically those which had already passed both Houses. Clearly this number would not have satisfied a very large aggregate of particular interests, and in fact there is nothing among these 17 bills which was of obvious major concern to Nyell or the West Country. They would certainly not have included the bills on free fishing and customs officers’ fees with which Nyell was personally involved. The latter was still at the committee stage. The former was waiting to pass the Lower House, and Nyell had already accepted that it would not now get through as a bill and could only be presented as a grievance. The 17 bills were in fact mainly adjustments to legal practices, addressing no broad or conspicuous public demand. The only group to obviously benefit would have been the radical Puritan element, for three of the bills were aimed at encouraging Godly behaviour. This would certainly have been welcome to a vigorous minority of Dartmouth’s inhabitants, but it did not address the broad, central economic problems of the town. Nyell nevertheless seemed to suppose that his constituents, and indeed the country generally, would take some gratification from a legislative programme of some kind. Any was better than none. The 17 bills did not include the most generally desirable public measure of all – that is, the monopolies bill, which had no chance of getting through on time. Nor did other “darling” bills for concealments and informers. Interestingly, Sir Nathaniel Rich, with no immediate constituency commitments, tended to think that it would be better to defer the legislative programme until these major national measures

122


could be obtained, and that the country would not be satisfied with anything less. He had the advantage of Nyell in being able to think of the country in the more detached sense of the term. It was not quite so imperative for Rich to have something in his hand to show when he returned home. But both he and Nyell were, in their different ways, looking at parliament’s legislative work in a governmental sense – as an essential administrative programme that had to be presented as such to the constituencies. When he spoke again two days later, Nyell still believed that some bills should be passed immediately to satisfy the country, but he also seized upon the possibility that this could be done without ending the session, thereby keeping the rest of the legislative programme alive. He said he agreed with the general view that the session should be merely adjourned, rather than that the House should sit for two weeks to pass bills and then be prorogued: For if we should have a sessions, there will be near an hundred good bills left unpassed, albeit we should dispatch as many bills as we could finish between now and the time prefixed.29 Nyell was very well informed. There was a list being compiled by the House which would show that there were in fact 108 bills at some stage of the legislative process. He was clearly taking a close interest in the overall prospects for legislation. The body of bills made an impressive figure. This, indeed, was the true balance of what was to be gained or lost. With all the hopes and efforts invested in this legislative programme, it was not surprising that MPs should be anxious to keep it in being if they could, or that in the end they decided to defer all the bills rather than take home just a token few. Nyell was perhaps disappointed at the decision, but it is nevertheless clear that like other MPs, he was looking at the process as a whole. In fact, there could hardly be a better illustration of the way that a local MP could come to perceive parliament’s law-making function in terms of an on-going governmental programme. This can be illustrated again from the attitudes of the Exeter MPs in 1621. Although their opinions about the recess in June are not recorded, they did write letters to their corporation discussing legislative prospects when the House was recalled in November. John Prowse and his colleague Ignatious Jourdain wrote to the mayor discussing what the king might be expected to consent to in the way of legislation in return for the subsidy granted for the Palatinate. They were no doubt still


123

hoping for progress with their bill dealing with serges and perpetuanos. But they did not refer to this in particular, just to bills in general. Prowse said that he could give no firm indication about the king’s intentions, “only that we labour heartily to prepare our bills for the king’s assent, hoping that we shall bring some home though not all that we desire”.30 Prowse now understood the problems only too well, and was preparing the mayor for a disappointment in respect of the city’s own bill, but hoping that he would be able to present a legislative programme of some kind in compensation. Jourdain was also in the business of consolation, saying that they hoped to pass some bills and to preserve the rest for a future session.31 There is a poignant and surely very potent tension in the manner in which these borough representatives struggled to get vital measures through parliament in the face of continual interruption and frustration. It may be said, of course, that it was sometimes the provocative attitude, or obsessive focus of the Commons on other important issues of the day that often resulted in the premature dismissal of parliaments. But the crucial fact remains – MPs had an on-going programme of legislation, both local and national, and they were constantly being prevented from putting it into force. John Prowse sat again for Exeter in 1624, when the political atmosphere was more auspicious, and the bill for perpetuanos was duly placed before the House once more. This time when Prowse wrote to the mayor on 24 April, he mentioned the bill specifically, but he still had to relate its prospects to those of the legislative programme as a whole. He said that he had managed to get it through two readings and into committee, but he was nevertheless pessimistic. It was not a problem of getting the bill accepted, simply a problem of the assembly being given enough time: “I doubt that our stay will be so long as to make it a law this session, but it must sleep with many other good bills until a new meeting.”32 A further letter three days later amplified the position. The bill was about to be heard by the committee and would then be given its third reading: “the next step is engrossing and so to be presented to the Lords, which I fear will hardly pass this session of parliament”.33 This was in fact the closest that the cloth bill would get to passing into law, because 1624 was the closest that crown and Commons came to amicable cooperation between 1610 and 1640. There was not to be another such opportunity. Exeter had at least one other legislative initiative in mind in 1624, though in the end they decided not to bring it forward. The Corporation was considering a bill for the confirmation of a new free grammar

124


school in the city. The proposal was hotly opposed by the local church authorities, who had a proprietary interest in the existing school. But this was not the main obstacle to the measure. Again, the real enemy was shortage of time. The Corporation was advised by Prowse’s fellow MP Nicholas Duck that if they proceeded they would be wasting their efforts and their money because parliament already had many more proposals than it could manage. “And if every day were a week yet would be little enough time to determine them, and many will come short of their expectations.”34 The image is very telling, as perhaps is the use of the word “expectations”. Legislation was regarded as a vital facility, and the demand for it was still growing and still projected, even though the opportunities were disappearing. Nottingham Corporation was also apparently among those waiting their chance. Its MPs were asked to seek some measure of clarification regarding the jurisdiction over certain bridges near the town, “in case occasion should be offered this parliament”. But the most illuminating evidence of the county’s views on legislation came in the parliament of 1625. In August of that year, six of the leading gentry wrote to their MPs asking them to seek to attach to the bill for the clerk of the markets a provision to redress “a general enormity, long complained on which is the unreasonable and variable measures used in market towns which cannot well be remedied without some further law than yet is made in that behalf”. They added that “no work would more bring the country to honour” their representatives. The concern was in much the same field of quality control that so exercised the minds of the Exeter merchants, and there was it seems a similar belief that only parliamentary law could address the problem effectively.35 The same tension between the projection of a necessary legislative programme and the frustration of seeing it constantly aborted can be noted in the correspondence of one of the MPs for Ilchester. The borough itself did not, as far as is known, have any particular legislative initiatives to make in the parliaments of this period, but its MP in 1621, Richard Wyn, showed a close interest in the subject of legislation. Wyn sat as a gentleman outsider from North Wales, and is not known to have involved himself closely with the affairs of his Somerset constituency. But he seems to have viewed the legislative process in much the same way as other West Country MPs. Although in later correspondence with his father at Gwydir he placed a natural focus on Welsh legislation, the issues had a familiar ring. He talked for instance about the bill


125

for free trade in Welsh cottons, and the bill which sought to integrate Wales fully into the parliamentary system by repealing the clauses of Henry VIII’s Act of Union which had allowed the monarch to legislate for Wales by prerogative.36 When he wrote to his father from parliament in 1621, Wyn did not refer to any particular legislative proposal, but spoke simply of the importance of the legislative programme in general. At the beginning of the first session he noted that “many good businesses are set on foot, but nothing yet finished, there was never parliament of so great hope”.37 But at the calling of the recess in June he had to note that these hopes and the whole legislative programme had been dashed: “I make no doubt you have heard how unexpectedly the parliament was adjourned, without the effecting of any of our businesses, which as I am informed the King repents him of, and if by the laws they could meet sooner than the time prefixed they should.”38 This was wishful thinking. It was an expression of the Commons’ concern for the legislative process, but it was not really shared by the king. The diarist Walter Yonge drew attention to another aspect of the inconvenience and frustration caused by the limitations being placed on the legislative programme. Yonge’s interest in parliamentary law has generally not been noted as much as other features of his career. This study, however, has already mentioned the early awareness of legislative proposals in his diary, and the catalogue of statutes which he compiled to guide the work of JPs. Other important aspects of his close concern with statute law in later decades will be dealt with in detail ahead. But in 1622, his diary recorded another problem caused by the premature breaking up of the parliament of 1621. “The last parliament there were 70 laws which stood upon discontinuance expired for that the parliament broke up suddenly in discontent.”39 He was referring to laws passed for a limited period only – which needed to be officially renewed to remain properly in force. His worries were not theoretical. These were laws which once again had specific relevance to Yonge’s concerns as a local magistrate – often they affected the regulations which governed the control of the poor, rogues, criminals, and other matters of social concern. Yonge’s calculations in these matters were usually accurate, and 70 statutes was really quite a large number. It was indicative of the process that was taking place. As statute law became more and more established as the most efficient and valued arbiter of socio-economic affairs, so the continual and consistent renewal of that facility became ever more vital.

126


The neglect of the counsels of parliament: 1625–1629 Changing views of government. Towards accountability. The assault on the king’s discretionary powers: the Petition of Right. The tonnage and poundage controversy. The “often abortions of parliament” becomes a principal grievance. The impasse is complete. Some further political implications of the demand for legislation can now be suggested. It created a powerful momentum. These boroughs and their representatives looked upon parliament and statute law as the strongest legal support available to protect and promote their concerns. It was unique in the level of guarantee it could provide, in the kind of principles and interests it would support, and the manner in which it responded to local needs and developments. As a corollary of this the local communities naturally hoped, and in a sense began to expect, that they would be given enough time to put their interests forward, or at least that they would be given another chance to promote those interests, in parliament, in the not too distant future. In fact, just as they perceived their vital interests as continuous features of their existence, so they began to project the legislative process as a continuity. They presented their most needful proposals again and again, and regularly ended one session by looking forward (hopefully) to the next. It was a facility which they were prepared to pursue in the face of continual obstruction. Disappointment did not apparently lessen their faith in the process. Their frustration took other forms. Revisionists have often observed that early seventeenth-century parliaments were only an occasional feature of government – not so much an institution as an event, whose happening was entirely dependent on the summons of the monarch. This was perfectly true. But it did not necessarily mean that parliament had no continuous place in people’s lives. To assume that shows the danger of restricting our view to the formal surface of affairs. In the minds of those who increasingly looked to the legislative service to meet their needs, the representative assembly was coming to be a constant factor in their calculations and projections. Historians have sometimes wondered why the public demand for parliamentary legislation continued unabated although parliament was not in a position to satisfy it. To be surprised by this reveals, again, a lack of sympathy with the nature of the representative concept. The demand persisted because these were the most vital interests of the localities, which they wished to pursue, and in many cases could only pursue


127

by legislative means. These interests did not disappear overnight, and neither did people’s desire for legislation to meet them. The special character of parliamentary law, its capacity to meet essential needs with definitive legal provisions, ensured that it would hold its place in peoples’ expectations. In this light, the fact that the frequency of parliaments was still dependent on the will of the monarch had a paradoxical effect. In one sense it obviously limited the incidence of the assembly and its part in political life. But in another way, the feeling that the meetings and the service were being arbitrarily constrained may actually have served to highlight its importance and raise the profile of the institution in the longer term. Conrad Russell supposed that because the king had ceased to want to legislate, therefore parliament’s legislative capacity had no political significance.40 In truth, of course, the very fact that the royal government was no longer on the growing list of people wanting to use or encourage the legislative service gave immanent political force to the ever-increasing demand in the kingdom at large. As already suggested, this took shape in part as a change in the perception of what constituted the most essential aspects of government. This is not simply inferred from the increasing urgency of constituency demands. It is sometimes spelled out quite specifically. We can turn, once again, to Walter Yonge for an explicit statement of the way that people were coming to regard the legislative service as of vital importance to the proper functioning of the kingdom, and beginning to look askance at those who denied or obstructed that work. As we have seen, the parliament of 1624 was a rare occasion (the only one between 1610 and 1640) when the House of Commons was allowed to sit long enough to complete something resembling a substantial programme of new laws. Yonge was nevertheless critical of those who had failed to make a significant contribution to this process. He aimed his comments at the House of Lords, but this also implied a criticism of the king and Privy Council: In this parliament there was not any one public bill sent to the lower house by them. See what care they have for the commonwealth, who were wont to be the chief statesmen and should be the pillars of the commonwealth.41 Yonge’s words, associating the concepts of statesmanship and lawmaking, are a striking illustration of how the process of legislation might indeed come to be seen as the most vital aspect of government. The

128


severity of his indictment of establishment inactivity is quite surprising, and suggests that the failure of the royal government to recognise this sentiment was already damaging its reputation. The king was not without information on the subject. In fact one of the clearest signs of the divergence came in a memo from his leading courtier. During the course of his noble labours to bring James and the Commons closer together in 1624, the Duke of Buckingham apparently undertook to outline to his master the main concerns of the House, on the basis that satisfying MPs in these respects would bring forth more generous supply. Buckingham noted of course that a renunciation of the Spanish Match would be greatly appreciated. But rather more interestingly, he also suggested that the parliamentary coffers would be unlocked if the Commons could be reassured that regular and sufficient opportunity would be allowed for the legislative programme to proceed. Because it is feared that when your turns are served, you will not call them together again to reform abuses, grievances and [for] the making of laws for the good government of the country.42 The prominence of these concerns was a measure of their importance. We have noted a similar trade-off two years later when the Nottinghamshire subsidy men were made more amenable to the Loan by the idea that payment would induce the king to call more parliaments, and not limit them to his own needs. This and the urgent attempt to amplify the bill for markets in 1625 suggest that despite the relative lack of evidence of direct legislative initiatives from the people of that county, their estimate of the importance of this distinctive parliamentary function was as high as anyone’s.43 More frequent parliaments were now sought not so much for the right to consent to taxation, but for a rather more positive purpose. In fact there was growing up an alternative parliamentary view of what constituted good government. This reverses the picture that we have usually been offered by historians in recent times. The Commons have been presented as frustrating the activities of government by failing to meet the financial needs of the crown. Here was the other side of the coin. The Commons feared that the king would fail to give them the opportunity to carry out what they were coming to regard as the most important aspects of regulation and administration. It marked a seminal readjustment in the balance of assumed responsibility for public affairs. And we can see how practical needs could provide the vital force for political change. People began to project a more permanent place for


129

parliament in the polity when parliamentary legislation showed that it could offer a governmental facility of continuous and constructive benefit to the way that they worked and traded. The desire to make the service more regular could thus convert into a political demand. In fact, an indication of how it might happen came as early as 1621. At the recess in June, Sir Nathaniel Rich, sitting for East Retford, appeared ready to challenge the very idea that they could be stopped in their tracks before their legislative work could be completed. We have already seen that when the Dartmouth and Exeter MPs were expressing their hopes that the legislative programme might be preserved, it was Rich, a figure of much greater personal standing in the House, who had actually moved that all the bills should be brought in from the committees and itemised, so “that nothing may be lost”.44 Accordingly, it was also Rich who made the most signal expression of dismay that the legislative programme was being brought to a halt. He raised the issue of whether the calling of the recess should itself be presented as a grievance, declaring that “to be suddenly taken off our business is a grief to be testified”. This hinted at an objection against the king’s hitherto undoubted prerogative of deciding when a parliamentary session should begin and end. The suggestion was apparently too radical for some people in the House for, at this point, Rich was interrupted. But he appealed to the House as a whole to decide whether he should continue, and the general sentiment must have been in his favour since he went on to repeat his argument at some length: “Our estate is a decaying estate in England we were preparing remedies and are taken off and intercepted.”45 The underlying tension is clearly visible here. Rich perceived that parliament’s work was quite simply, a public necessity. The fact that they were not being allowed the scope to carry it through was beginning to create a sense of frustration that was rather more than just private and local. It was not unlikely that the pressure might accumulate to a point where the only solution appeared to be a change in parliament’s political position. Rich had the opportunity to sit for East Retford again in 1624, but in the end opted for a constituency nearer home in Essex. He was not to represent either of the areas of special interest to this study again. But he did continue to reflect their most important concerns, as described above. And to this extent he remains relevant to the story – more particularly because it is with a figure of Rich’s status that we are most likely to see how these tensions developed or worked themselves out. In fact, throughout the 1620s Rich’s attitude provides the most consistent illustration of how the business of parliament was coming to be seen as a continuous necessity, and its “often abortion”, as he

130


eventually complained, was becoming increasingly hard to accept. As already noted, it was Rich’s motion in 1621 that the bills should be counted, “that nothing may be lost”, which produced the list of 108 initiatives in being, and demonstrated the scale of what was at stake. It was probably also Rich who inspired and helped to draft the declaration promising supply for the king, which got parliament recalled in November of that year. There were undoubtedly two purposes in his mind – to gain another chance to open up the question of foreign affairs, and an opportunity to try to complete the legislative programme. At first the ploy seemed to have worked when parliament was recalled at the end of 1621. But the tensions soon re-emerged, not only over foreign affairs, but also over the important underlying difference about the essential nature of government. The monopolies bill made progress in the Commons, but was rejected by the Lords. Rich was incensed that a measure which he regarded as of crucial importance should be obstructed in this way: This bill against monopolies was promised by the King, and did encourage the people to give freely to the subsidies; and is a bill on which the hope and expectation of the country is set. And because their Lordships, whom it least concerns, have cast it away without conference, that we shall give such an answer as may show our sense of the disrespect to us.”46 This clearly paralleled the sentiment in Walter Yonge’s complaint, already cited, criticising the unconstructive attitude of the Lords to legislation generally. Once again we see the representative element in the parliamentary equation assuming the principal commitment to public administration. Rich believed the monopolies bill to be a vital, national requirement, and consequently found it intolerable that this should be frustrated by those who had no direct accountability to the country. It was further confirmation that a repositioning was taking place as to what was to be considered crucial to the provision of government, and that this involved some striking new equations as to the source of authority behind it, and who was prepared to take the chief responsibility for it. When the next parliament met in a rather more conciliatory and propitious atmosphere in 1624, Rich was as ever at the forefront of trying to sustain an ongoing parliamentary programme. On 4 March 1624, he was instrumental in the application to the Lord Treasurer “to desire him to send to this House the labours of the last parliament concerning trade”, which had been perhaps the most important general concern


131

of the previous assembly. And on 10 March, when a motion was made to have the journal examined to check the grievances which had been current in the previous parliament, Rich added the suggestion that the same thing might be done for the parliament of 1610.47 In 1624, for the first time since 1610, there turned out to be a genuine opportunity to get a legislative programme through the House. The monopolies bill was one of the most important measures that finally reached the statute book. In its final form it was perhaps less than satisfactory, for it included exemptions for those who could be characterised as inventors and royal officers – and these were loopholes that might be exploited in the future. And in general terms, even in 1624 the total of statutes attained (35) still fell a long way short (less than half) of the number which had been achieved regularly between 1603 and 1610. We have already noted many of the particular legislative initiatives that were disappointed in 1624 and gained the clear impression that these were just the tip of the iceberg of unsatisfied demand. But however limited, this would prove to be the last real opportunity for legislation for another decade and a half. Whether it could have been otherwise, whether the renewal of legislative activity could have been built upon if the distrust between king and Commons had not immediately been further exacerbated by foreign policy issues, is an interesting question. Ironically, Rich was centrally involved in the final breakdown of relations between king and parliament which precluded further legislative programmes in the 1620s. But even so, the kind of approach that he adopted still shows that the stance of the parliamentary opposition in the later years of the decade was not essentially negative. Rich had a very constructive attitude towards public affairs, and a very clear perception of what he considered to be the public interest – it was just that in many ways it happened to be different from the king’s. In the parliament of 1625, Rich exerted himself strenuously to assist the government’s objective of further supply for the war effort. But as before, the question of “which war” was crucial, and there were other vital public concerns which he wished to be addressed before the subsidy was decided. He felt that the war aims, and the identity of the enemy, were still not sufficiently transparent. And he wished the king to take “advised counsel” on these important issues. He wanted the necessity of “looking into the king’s estate” to be recognised. He wanted a positive response from the king on the question of impositions. And he wished Charles to condemn religious opinions such as those recently expressed by Richard Montague, which Rich considered akin to “popish

132


idolatry”.48 It was the call for “advised counsel” which seems to have been the biggest immediate hurdle to overcome. Explicit distrust of the Duke of Buckingham’s leadership was soon being expressed in the House. It was this that the king apparently found most difficult to accept, for both personal and political reasons, and he dissolved parliament. Christopher Thompson has produced a closely argued and very worthwhile refutation of the revisionist view of the 1625 parliament.49 He finds that the problem was not, after all, Commons’ obstructivism. Perhaps most interesting is Thompson’s suggestion that the succession of Charles I brought, if anything, a stepping up of monarchical intransigence. Charles failed to manage the Commons effectively, and was indeed “fundamentally unwilling to bargain, except in the most pressing circumstances”.50 This is very probably true, but it leaves an important aspect of the question un-addressed. The drawback to countering the revisionists on their own territory of court politics is that the issue comes to hinge too simplistically on the capabilities, or otherwise, of the king. In a sense this leads us to underestimate Charles’s problems, and, most crucially, the ambitions of his people. It now seems clear that the king quickly came to perceive parliament not just as obstructing supply, but as leading a “popular” assault against the monarchy, and by 1626 he was determined to avoid calling it again, if possible.51 We need to ask more about the basis of Charles’s apprehensions of parliament. One reason was certainly the obsessive pursuit of Buckingham. In the 1626 assembly, the attack on the Duke’s performance as Lord High Admiral began in earnest. His enemies in the Lords now joined the assault. And in the Commons, Sir Nathaniel Rich continued to play an important part. The specific responsibility for the humiliating failure of the Cadiz expedition was now added to the more general charge of failing to defend the channel against pirates. Rich supported Sir John Eliot’s demand that any financial support should be conditional on the removal of those responsible for previous wastage: “till some impediments be removed, we are doubtful what success our gifts and enterprise may come to”.52 Rich also proposed a quid pro quo on the question of customs dues. “The subject would keep up his revenues according to the book of rates” if the king “would undertake that he be quieted from further impositions”.53 When the king demanded that they proceed at once to vote him supply, Rich retorted that the House should first produce a remonstrance condemning Buckingham, and the unauthorised collection of tonnage and poundage.54 As before, the king preferred to protect his leading minister, and his control of the customs, and he dissolved the Houses. For some while thereafter he firmly resisted the


133

idea of resummoning them.55 But lacking parliamentary supply, Charles was obliged to resort to “arbitrary” expedients such as the Forced Loan, in order to maintain the war effort. And to enforce it he was prepared to imprison resisters without charge. Setting aside the additional provocation that this created, the Loan was, in general, successfully collected. But it failed to solve the king’s financial problems, and in 1628 parliament was recalled in a political climate that was hardly improved. The parliament of 1628 is the most famous of assemblies, apart perhaps from the Long Parliament that followed twelve years later. The session of 1628 made its own particular contribution to the tradition of civil liberties – the Petition of Right. In a very romanticised Whig view, men like Eliot and Pym “pleaded the cause of posterity” in individual rights and freedom, while “Hampden, Cromwell and hundreds more looked on with a passion that sometimes broke forth in tears.”56 Recent historians have been more in the business of pouring cold water than shedding tears of gratitude. In their determination to deny the idea of a progression towards civil war, revisionists have demoted the radical force of 1628. Thus, Conrad Russell viewed that parliament as essentially conservative and inward-looking, suggesting that although on this occasion localist obstructivism may have got the better of duty to the king, there was no desire to challenge his authority.57 But if we can manage to free ourselves from the revisionist need to prove a disconnection, we must surely recognise that it would be most surprising if there were not causal links of some kind between the marked constitutional tensions that existed on either side of Charles’s “Personal Rule”. The following pages take forward the themes, characters and localities that have emerged in previous chapters, and identify the kind of basis for parliamentarianism that had clearly emerged by 1628. The Commons assembled in that year with the simple but significant aim of outlawing the whole range of discretionary powers employed by the government in the recent past: that is, arbitrary imprisonment, unparliamentary taxation of whatever kind, martial law and billeting. It was an impressive shopping list. And there was an implicit understanding that in return for being allowed to attend to these matters, the Commons would grant the king substantial subsidies – in fact they offered five. In condemning the crown’s emergency powers, the Commons would claim of course that they were simply confirming existing liberties and laws. It was a time when political action of any kind had to be justified by reference to precedent, not to progress. Many historians however seem happy to accept the invocations of

134


fundamental rights at face value. On this basis, for instance, Derek Hirst has stressed the “sheer conservatism” of the promoters of the measure. But he contradicts himself when he points out, quite correctly, that in fact the petition did not rely on existing law – it “appeared to insist that there ought to be a statutory warrant for every executive action”.58 Here indeed was the crux of the issue. And this was why the assault on the king’s discretionary rights entailed a fundamental challenge to the nature of the monarchy. They wanted to subject the king’s emergency powers to parliamentary authority. This can perhaps be seen more clearly in the light of that crucial and paradoxical association of representative rights and “unlimited” power that has been identified at various points in previous chapters. It was suggested that if this connection could not be rebutted or reversed, it was most likely to resolve itself in the enhancement of the authority of parliament. This was now beginning to happen in an almost extreme fashion, and we do a great disservice if we fail to recognise the force of it. In effect, parliament was seeking to incorporate into administrative law that extraordinary notion that the king was not the locus of absolute power in himself, and that by implication “absolute” power of any kind could only be exercised through the consent of the representative assembly. This was a logical enough reflection of the concept of legislative sovereignty from which the ambition emerged. But it directly contradicted all the conventional notions as well as the real contingency needs of royal government. In the light of the underlying thrust of the measure, it was not too surprising that Rich found himself obliged to note, “It hath been said by some (how believed I cannot tell) that this House hath no good opinion of a monarchical government.” He felt he should assure everyone, “It is false: we were born under that government, and under that government we desire to die.”59 Quite so, but if the Commons’ claims were taken to their logical conclusion it would produce a rather different kind of monarchy. The parliament of 1628 was therefore a confrontation fraught with underlying tensions and difficulties. The king had only agreed to countenance this comprehensive review of his administrative policies because of the great pressure of financial need, and it was not too surprising that he should still try to resist and restrict the Commons in the detail of what they were trying to do. He rejected their first proposals outright. He sent a message suggesting that they should trust him to observe their liberties. He said that he was happy to have Magna Charta and other relevant statutes confirmed, but he could not allow the Commons to expand on the statutes to specifically outlaw his recent activities, in what


135

would amount to definitive new legislation. Rich expressed the unwillingness of the House to accept this rebuff: “unless they be confirmed as we have expounded them, they are but shells he will take order for soldiers: let him say it is against the law; so for loans, privy seals, imprisonment and the like”.60 That final phrase “and the like” seems suggestive. Rich wanted the measure to cover everything – surely a sign that he could envisage an alternative balance of administrative power. That the public at large displayed an unprecedented degree of interest in these questions is not doubted by historians.61 But the West Country provides one particularly instructive example of how closely local opinion was involved with the radical drift of this determined and ambitious attempt to deny the king’s discretionary powers. It is found in the correspondence of the MP for Bridgewater, Thomas Smyth. He was elected for the first time in 1628. He was unusual among Bridgewater MPs of the period in that he lived 25 miles from the town, and apparently had no direct association with it. The Corporation expressed some unease about this in a letter to Smyth’s father-in-law, Lord Poulett, whose recommendation had been the decisive factor.62 Their apprehensions may to some degree have been justified, for Smyth is not known to have managed any business on behalf of the town. But his letters did reflect the more general public concerns that were currently at issue. He wrote regularly to his mother Elizabeth at home in Long Ashton and received letters from her in return, delivered to the house of the family tailor, Mr Betty, just outside Temple Bar, where Smyth was residing while attending the Commons. One of Elizabeth’s letters indicates that she had received correspondence from her son on 6 May, informing her of the progress of the “great business” on which parliament was engaged. His tone must have been encouraging. It seems that he had written on 30 April, when the Commons had resolved on the final form of their bill outlawing the discretionary powers, and were now waiting for the approval of the Lords, little expecting the immediate disapproval of the king. Elizabeth said that although she had heard something of it previously, it had been “diversely reported”, whereas “true news is both dainty and being good welcome, which God send us and that the freedom may as well pass above as it doth in the Lower House”. She added, “many comes to enquire of me. I shall now, I thank you, be able to inform my friends truly”. But she also referred to the, perhaps more up-to-date, information that she had received from other quarters. “I was told of a trust that was commanded, but they could not tell the reason of it. Such an escape as hath been, deserves thanksgiving if not fasting.”63 Time and distance may have blurred the

136


sequence of events, though perhaps to no greater extent than the situation was already blurred at Westminster. But what was abundantly clear was the strength of common purpose that was informing public opinion. Elizabeth’s words show plainly that to her mind the king’s assurances of good behaviour simply did not meet the requirement. Even in the local and domestic context of Long Ashton there was a determination that the royal discretionary powers should be specifically declared unlawful. But Elizabeth’s letter was overoptimistic. It was not quite time to celebrate success. The king was still determined to resist as far as he could, and in his own terms he was making quite a good fist of it. The Petition of Right was conceived as a compromise solution: the king would make a legal acknowledgement of their concerns but would not be obliged to countenance new legislation as such. Sir Nathaniel Rich continued to state his preference for the absolute authority of a bill, but the king’s rejection of this idea showed a sound political instinct. For this would have been the Commons employing their greatest degree of sovereign power to counteract his own. Charles did not accept the Petition very gracefully either. His first response was dismissive. He offered no more than his original promise to obey the law, and still omitted to refer himself to the interpretations that the Commons had placed upon it.64 The Commons, feeling that they had already drastically reduced their demands to accommodate the king, were dismayed to find that they had made no progress at all. Some MPs, and particularly Sir John Eliot, began to hint at a renewed pursuit of royal ministers. They received instructions that this was not acceptable, and sat for a while in silence. Then Rich spoke again: “My heart goes not with those who say we should sit in silence. We must now speak or forever hold our peace.”65 He proposed a Remonstrance to show how the king and kingdom were being misled by evil influences, notably, and inevitably the Duke of Buckingham. Rich was supported by his successor as MP for Totnes, Sir Edward Giles: “We sit as men daunted, let us put on the spirits of Englishmen and speak to the purpose. Let us follow the motion made.”66 Rich drew up a long list of items for the Remonstrance, headed by “Often abortions of parliament” and “The neglect of the counsels of parliament”.67 Charles’s first instinct was to respond as had become customary with him and dissolve the assembly. But the issue seems to have been turned when the Upper House showed itself to be in a significant degree of sympathy with the Commons. The Lords were now beginning to express concern that the kingdom literally could not afford to be constantly at


137

odds with itself in this manner. There was a powerful consensus that the issue needed to be resolved in some way. Charles was persuaded to make a more positive, though far from gracious, reply to the Petition.68 He still indicated rather ominously that he thought this amounted to no more than he had already promised. But the measure had, at least nominally, received the royal approval. One of the advantages of Charles’s approach was that the Commons were perhaps more satisfied with this outcome than they might once have been, and Rich now did his best to encourage a constructive response to the king’s needs. He proposed that the House should proceed to accommodate Charles on the issues of supply and tonnage and poundage: “without any other business until these be done”.69 Speed could be achieved without too much difficulty as far as the subsidy was concerned. But tonnage and poundage was a rather different matter, with all sorts of further ramifications. Tonnage and poundage was a formerly well accepted levy which the Commons customarily granted to the monarch for life at the beginning of each reign. In 1625, however, they had decided to restrict their grant to Charles to one year only. This has rightly been called an “insulting proposal”.70 It was also a perfect example of the way that the Commons were hardening up their representative rights – in this instance turning a formality into a reality. The king could be forgiven for feeling that the goalposts had been moved, and there was no reason either in principle or in practice for him to accept this situation. In the event, he continued to collect the levy without parliamentary authorisation. And this of course became in itself a grievance to the Commons. At one level the standoff could have been resolved without too much difficulty. The most likely compromise would have been for parliament to agree to a grant for life after all, and for Charles to accept the authority of the assembly in this matter retrospectively. The main problem was that tonnage and poundage had become bound up with the question of impositions. This indeed had been the principal reason that the Commons had restricted their grant to one year in 1625. They feared that to do otherwise might appear to indicate that they endorsed the situation regarding prerogative impositions.71 In the previous reign, as we have seen, much controversy had arisen over various kinds of customs dues which were regarded as not customary at all, but in fact superimposed, like the pretermitted customs and impositions. Before making the grant in full, the Commons wanted to clarify these questions and to establish which levies were acceptable and which were not. They wanted in fact to create a new book of rates by parliamentary authority. This would have been a new departure, giving parliament a direct control over the valuation of goods

138


for customs purposes which the assembly had never previously enjoyed. In other words, tonnage and poundage was now just one factor in the general ambition of parliament to bring all customs dues into the sphere of representative regulation. Whether this could ever have been achieved amicably is an interesting question. There would have been certain advantages from the king’s point of view. His customs revenues would not only have been formally legalised, but in all probability greatly increased – which was indeed what happened when the Commons had the freedom to put their plan into action in 1641. This was the deal that Rich proposed regularly in every parliament from 1625 onwards. It is impossible to know the balance of Charles’s motivations for not allowing it to proceed in 1628. He had got his subsidy, which was always the principal purpose of the exercise from his point of view. He certainly continued to be incensed by parliament’s incorrigible habit of turning on the Duke of Buckingham. And he probably found it provocative that even in the relatively cooperative mood that followed the passing of the Petition of Right, Rich and the other parliamentary leaders were still happy to stand up and declare all impositions illegal.72 They, of course, regarded this simply as a corollary of the principles set out in the Petition. The parliamentary leaders asked for an adjournment to give them time to consult with the constituencies and try to resolve the knotty problem of what were the acceptable forms and levels of customs duties. Charles preferred to prorogue the assembly. Perhaps it was simply that the time could not be spared. But such evidence as we have seems to indicate that Charles, not too surprisingly, was just unwilling to give way on the issue. When there were hints of official compromise on the question of the merchants imprisoned for non-payment, order came from the royal court to halt the moves towards leniency.73 It was a stance from which the king never really wavered. The Commons were not to be allowed to establish the general principle of representative customs dues. Ironically, the Commons’ leaders do appear to have believed that a deal on tonnage and poundage was possible, and as will become clear, there was a general and genuine frustration that time was not allowed for it. A select committee had been set up, but on 19 June they reported that it was impossible to perfect the bill in the time available – it would take at least six weeks. Five days later, Rich expressed the frustration of the House that the question of impositions could not be resolved in time to pass tonnage and poundage. He put the blame squarely on Charles’s shoulders: “in this straight of time we have no way left. when if it had pleased the king to have adjourned we might have taken a course. had


139

his full revenue and the subject well contented”.74 As so often, they were reduced to entrusting their ambitions to a remonstrance, declaring “tonnage and poundage and other impositions not granted by parliament. a breach of the fundamental liberties of the kingdom, and contrary to the Petition of Right”. They enjoined the merchants to continue to refuse payment.75 Even in the midst of crisis and controversy, Rich did his best to keep the idea of a programme of socio-economic legislation afloat. He suggested “those gentlemen who have any bill pending, that they may deliver them to the clerk to be in readiness against the next meeting”.76 He himself had a particular initiative in mind – a bill to promote trade in the West Indies, which he said he would “study and fit against the next session”. This apparently received a great cheer in the House, with the West Country representatives no doubt joining in the acclamation. Rich at this time is probably as close as we can get to an authoritative voice expressing the balance of opinion or mood of the Commons. And his programme consistently gave prominence to the core concerns of boroughs like Dartmouth – based on the removal of impositions and the promotion of trade in the Americas. The MPs were also perhaps cheering Rich’s presumption that there would indeed be a next session. This had to be a matter of hope rather than expectation. For once again, MPs were being sent back to their constituencies with the sense that there was much vital public business left undone, and with no assurance as to when they might be granted another chance to address it. So at the end of the 1628 assembly, the most specific and controversial issue outstanding between king and parliament was tonnage and poundage, and the closely associated question of impositions. In this respect, the reflection between 1629 and 1610 seems quite instructive in itself. Just as in 1610 a contest between prerogative and parliamentary customs dues had laid the foundations for the impasse between king and Commons, so in 1629 a dispute of a very similar character made the barrier to all intents and purposes insurmountable. The question of the authority by which customs dues were raised was persistently the sharpest point on which the choice between parliament and patent turned. It illustrates once again the extent to which the commercial aspect framed the area of dissension. And rather like the demand for more scope for socio-economic legislation, so the desire to subject the raising of customs to parliamentary authority was constantly running into the problem of the shortage of time that the Commons were given to address it. It is difficult to judge

140


precisely why more leeway was not allowed, but a balance of probabilities can be suggested. Even in the case of legislation, there was probably something more than mere indifference in the attitude of the crown. It is likely that James in particular would have felt a certain apprehension about giving free rein to parliament’s sovereign law-making service. And as regards impositions, most of the evidence and subsequent events would seem to indicate a real disinclination to allow the Commons to do what they wished in this area. Charles was always half influenced by the fact that in practice he could continue collecting tonnage and poundage anyway, as he had done in the past, and certainly intended to do in the future. He might be losing the argument about the nature of power, but he still held most of the levers in his hands. Indeed, not to have taken advantage of this would have further drastically reduced an already inadequate income, and was really not an option. The Petition of Right altered the situation in as far as it must have greatly irked the king to feel that according to the letter of the document he was acting illegally. In fact he had ended the 1628 session with a speech proclaiming his intention to continue to collect the levy by right. Afterwards, he called in the Commons Journal and unilaterally enrolled the speech so as to specifically allow his prerogative in the customs, and thereby contradicting the Petition’s purpose of proscribing any kind of levy that lacked parliamentary consent. For good measure, a new printing of the famous document was made and circulated with the addition not only of the king’s speech, but also of his first, and wholly unsatisfactory, answer to the petition. Charles further asserted that his second answer had said no more than this, and that his discretionary rights could not be subject to parliamentary statute.77 The king’s ability to subvert the Petition in this way has sometimes been interpreted as showing the weakness of parliament’s position.78 But in truth, the fact that he was driven to these measures testifies to the real force of the challenge he was facing. Charles believed that he possessed discretionary powers that were, by definition, not subject to the dispensations of parliament. And like his father, he believed that he had a right of prerogative customs dues. The House of Commons on the other hand, now wished to bring all such powers under their own general supervisory authority. In the light of this, we can only wonder what Charles hoped to achieve when he recalled parliament as early as January 1629. Conrad Russell noted that he could not even expect a new subsidy, since the last had not yet come on stream.79 Russell suggested that Charles chose this moment deliberately, acting as a constructive monarch, without vested


141

interest, making a final attempt to come to terms with an obstructive House of Commons. But it is probably better seen as the king trying again to reclaim his customary right in tonnage and poundage, and thus resolve a situation which was causing him considerable inconvenience. The merchants had responded with notable enthusiasm to parliament’s call for civil disobedience, resulting in what Robert Brenner has described as a “general strike” against any kind of unparliamentary levy.80 This not only created severe practical difficulties in halting for a time the king’s income from the customs, it also brought its own particular brand of humiliation. Brenner quotes the observation of the Tuscan ambassador that “the sailors refuse to pay the usual duties, insisting that Parliament did not grant them to the king as they did to his father”. No doubt merchant opposition could have been outfaced and outlasted, as indeed it was after 1629. But in 1628, Charles had many reasons to try once more to get tonnage and poundage regularised on the conventional basis. He could hardly have thought however that the mood of the Commons would be more amenable. They were bound to take the side of prosecuted merchants. And the royal amendment to the Journal was soon discovered. On Rich’s motion, it was decided that a committee of the whole House would investigate how the Petition of Right had been transgressed since the last assembly.81 In response to these concerns, Charles was prepared to add a further gloss to his position and assure them that after all he had only presumed to collect tonnage and poundage by necessity, not of right.82 But quite apart from the obvious question of whether this was to be relied upon, it would not in any case resolve the underlying point of contention. The course of the 1629 parliament was determined most of all by the fact that tonnage and poundage was now inextricably bound up with the issue of impositions. The vital equation for MPs was whether Charles was now prepared to allow the question of impositions to be settled in favour of parliament. This had been the basic condition for a deal on tonnage and poundage ever since the beginning of the reign. There is little indication that Charles was now ready to accept it. Such evidence that we have of the king’s position indicates that he was proposing a limited agreement to resolve the immediate controversy. If the Commons would pass the bill as it had done for his predecessors, he would acknowledge that he raised tonnage and poundage only by right of this grant, and not by prerogative.83 The intention was clearly to get tonnage and poundage regularised on the customary basis. For many of the Commons’ leaders, this simply did not address the underlying requirement.

142


So although some members were happy to set the tonnage and poundage bill in motion as the government wished, the dominant group in the House, led by Sir John Eliot, were inclined to defer it, and wanted to focus first on the new challenge to liberty arising from recent controversies. Rich, as ever, was also keen to deal with these grievances first, and did not intend to be hurried about the matter of tonnage and poundage.84 There was obvious concern that the measure should not be rushed through before the question of impositions had been clarified. Sir John Coke was told precisely this when he tried to bring in the tonnage and poundage bill on 26 January.85 Eliot noted that the bill in its present form left the power of impositions unchallenged, and recalled that they might have resolved these problems in the previous session if the king had allowed them the time.86 This obviously echoed what Rich had said then, and there seems to have been a real sense of resentment about it which was exerting a powerful influence on their attitude now. S.R. Gardiner suggested that if the Commons had made a specific offer to accept the existing impositions in return for a promise from Charles to waive the right for the future, the king would have agreed.87 But there is little real evidence that this was so. In fact, the king’s present proposals as well as his past record seemed rather to indicate the opposite – showing a persistent unwillingness to accept the principle of representative customs dues. The parliamentary leaders no doubt felt that if scope were going to be allowed for them to address the issue of impositions, it would have happened in 1628. This assessment was judicious. In fact, in his declaration following the dissolution of the 1629 assembly, Charles spelled out quite clearly his subjective aims in calling it. He described at some length the way that tonnage and poundage had always been taken by his predecessors without question, and suggested that the endorsement of the Commons was just a formality.88 His purposes were in direct contrast to those of the House. He had no interest in deals that would remove his right of impositions – he simply wished to reinstate his conventional right in tonnage and poundage. The Commons’ leaders were surely quite correct in perceiving a danger that they would now be cornered into passing the bill on tonnage and poundage, leaving what they considered to be the real problem of impositions left unresolved. This would have deprived them of any further influence in the matter. It is probably in this light that we should interpret the apparently chaotic and uncooperative courses of the 1629 assembly. King and Commons were fundamentally at odds on the most crucial issue, which therefore had little prospect of resolution. The impasse was complete.


143

And this was the main reason that the proceedings seemed to lose all sense of purpose. The tonnage and poundage bill was not even read. And if the Commons spent much of their time fulminating against the actions of the customs authorities, and pursuing some rather doubtful privilege claims in defence of the merchants, it was perhaps because, as so often, they were obliged to approach their central aims somewhat obliquely. For the rest, a great deal of energy was expended on religious questions, which offered much scope for the release of strong feelings. None of this provided any satisfaction whatever for the king, and in the end the Commons were reduced, as in previous sessions, to trying to make a statement of their position before they were dissolved. There followed the famous final scene in the story of the breakdown of relations between Charles and his parliaments, where the speaker was forcibly prevented from closing the assembly, whilst Eliot read out his declaration against arbitrary tonnage and poundage and the “Arminian” tendencies in the church which were thought, among other things, to be encouraging these undesirable fiscal policies. Another West Country MP, William Strode, now came to the fore as one of Eliot’s lieutenants.89 Strode made the clearest statement of the underlying motive for Eliot’s declaration. He desired it to be read, he said, “that we may not be turned off like scattered sheep, as we were at the end of last session, and have a scorn put upon us in print; but that we may leave something behind us”.90 He seemed to be echoing the exasperation that Rich and Eliot had expressed at the frustration of their efforts at the end of the last session, when they had been prevented from settling the question of impositions, and their achievement of the Petition of Right had been blatantly subverted. The view no doubt held by the royal government (and often since by historians) that the assembly had become purposeless did not therefore lessen the feeling among MPs that they were again being “turned off” prematurely. The truth was that the House of Commons did have much vital public business to attend to, but it was often different, and sometimes completely opposite, to that of the king. In 1628 they had achieved quite a lot, but had then found their intent contradicted. In 1629 they had not even begun to achieve their real aims regarding impositions and tonnage and poundage. All they could do was to make their position clear beyond any possible doubt. This is the best indication of the true balance of political affairs at the end of the 1620s. The negative view of parliament in this decade would see 1629 as the moment when the Commons finally “lost it” – when obstructivism dissolved into incoherent anger, moving beyond the possibility of cooperation, and the king was left little choice but to

144


attempt to govern without further reference to the assembly. Attempts to defend the Commons from this kind of judgement have sometimes been rather overelaborate. Christopher Thompson, for instance, has produced a weighty, detailed analysis of the variety of approaches among the Commons’ leaders in 1629 aimed, rather paradoxically, at showing that there was a pattern to events in the House, even though the leadership was divided.91 In a conventional sense this is a highly scholarly contribution, but for that very reason it is also a particularly clear example of the dangers of getting too close to details that can never be complete, and a historiography that becomes steadily less coherent. As Thompson himself acknowledges, the evidence is simply not adequate to establish a convincing picture of truly significant differences among the Commons’ leaders. The two supposed strands of opinion are internally inconsistent, and tend to overlap. And in any case it is not quite clear what insight we gain from the suggestion that the denouement owed “as much to the victory of one group of these leaders over another as to the conflict between the House and the king”.92 This seems to bring us round full circle. And again the diversions of factional interplay deflect from the genuinely positive aspects of the Commons’ position, albeit different from that of the king. There is thus a need to re-establish a perspective in which we can keep track of the consistent features that might illuminate the general aims and principles that the parliamentary leaders shared and pursued persistently as simple public necessities, in as far as they were allowed to do so. It might be the increasing demand for the scope to legislate for the socio-economic well-being and good governance of the realm, and the frustration at being obstructed in that aim; or the insistence on the raising of public finance being subject to representative control; or the attempt to definitively outlaw the crown’s discretionary powers; or the desire to influence the course of foreign policy in their chosen direction, and hold the king’s leading minister to account for what they considered to be failures in that sphere. In all these ways parliament was presenting itself as the arbiter of an independent public interest that covered the entire range of the affairs of the kingdom. It was a constructive position for the simple reason that MPs had come to believe that they necessarily reflected and defined that public interest. In other words, in every sense, they were asserting the representative principle. It was not too surprising that James and Charles were reluctant to allow the force of this, and found themselves regularly having to parry or resist the ambitions of the Commons. Frequently, their only effective course was to dismiss the assembly. Thus it was that Rich had to put


145

the “neglect of the counsels of parliament” and the “often abortions of parliament” at the head of the list of grievances in 1628. This latter phrase is a useful measure of the underlying issue. In revisionist terms, the “often abortions of parliament” might have indicated a body whose negative approach had rendered it incapable of serving the public interest. But as we have seen, this begs the question of precisely how the public interest was to be constituted. And in truth the phrase “often abortions of parliament” indicated a body which was now fairly well convinced that the public interest could not be properly identified or addressed without it. It was in this same spirit that at the end, in 1629, Strode suggested to the Speaker that he needed to decide whether he was the servant of the House, or the servant of the king.93 It would not be many years before the same question would be put to the kingdom at large.

Government without parliaments: 1629–1640. The kingdom “bereaved of the legislative power”. In some ways the title of this section may be regarded as contentious. For since by convention it was not necessary for the king to govern with parliament, it was in that sense not particularly notable to find him governing without it. But the demand for a more regular and reliable parliamentary service was becoming more powerful in the constituencies and in the Commons. And it was in this light that the absence of parliaments also acquired a new significance. It is possible that in 1629 Charles took a conscious decision to attempt to do without parliaments for the foreseeable future. He had already warned the Houses in 1626 that he would make his mind up whether or not to call assemblies “as I find the fruits of them good or evil”.94 And since the meetings of the late 1620s had, for one reason or another, brought him a great deal of aggravation and little or no satisfaction, it would not have been entirely surprising if the king had chosen to try to govern without parliaments if he could. In fact, it seems increasingly to be assumed that he did take such a decision.95 On the basis of the varying drafts of the Declaration explaining the dissolution of 1629, it has been suggested that Charles would have liked to simply state that no more assemblies would be called, but was deflected by his advisers from making his intentions thus transparent.96 In the event, it would only be with the greatest possible reluctance, and under severe pressure, that Charles would turn to parliament again in 1640.

146


As the eleven-years’ “Personal Rule” wore on, it must have seemed to the political classes that the worst scenario had come to pass, and that the king was both willing and able to deprive his subjects of the legislative and restorative process of parliament on a permanent basis. How would the constituencies and their representatives respond to such a prolonged absence of opportunity to promote their interests, national and local, through the parliamentary system? Perhaps these vital interests, and the perception that parliament was the place to resolve them, would simply fade away, and people would find other methods of addressing their problems. Perhaps, on the other hand, the sense of these imperatives would not lessen at all. Perhaps the feeling of frustration would simply become sharper. Parliamentary voices were perforce quiet in the 1630s. The assembly was by definition the forum in which public opinion was expressed, and it is only really possible to judge what people felt during the absence of parliaments by what they said and did when they met again in 1640. Some historians have exploited the lack of more continuous evidence to suggest that in fact what they said in 1640 did not reflect what they felt of the decade as a whole, but only what they had begun to feel recently. Kevin Sharpe, for instance, has portrayed the 1630s as a halcyon period of domestic peace and contentment, only latterly disrupted by the Bishops’ Wars and the burdens and necessities that they imposed.97 But a straightforward view of the evidence of 1640 surely indicates the contrary. As we shall see ahead, parliamentary leaders right across the spectrum of opinion made it clear that their grievances were of long standing. This was apparent in the fact that the greatest grievance was the disuse of parliament as such, and most of all in the importance they attached to the facilities of which, in John Pym’s words, the kingdom had thereby been bereaved. The survival of the localities’ socio-economic interest in parliamentary provision can certainly be illustrated. This is the case for instance with the most important concern of the Exeter merchants – the regulation of cloth manufacture. After the failure to achieve legislation in 1621 and 1624, other means were attempted, but none were successful. In 1625, the royal government proposed a scheme to regulate cloth production through county corporations, but it came to nothing.98 In the mid-1630s, the “decay of trade” seemed to make the issue still more urgent, and the Exeter merchants began to take soundings among the Privy Council with a view to obtaining orders for regulatory powers. The government was in principle still in favour of regulation, and in May 1638, Exeter sent one of its leading representatives to London to


147

pursue the matter. There were extensive discussions about it, but again nothing was achieved.99 There is no obvious indication that the city was proposing to revive its cloth bill when parliament finally met again in 1640. Exeter’s petitions to the House stressed other even more pressing matters, like the worsening trade depression, and the continual problem of piracy.100 1640 was not in any case the ideal moment for legislative initiatives. As in 1628, the House was rather preoccupied with other matters. In fact, it was not until 1661 that something like a stable legislating context returned, and Exeter duly revived its bill for “preventing abuses in the making of serges, perpetuanos and other stuffs”.101 These vital interests remained in being, and parliamentary legislation remained the optimum and often the only means of dealing with them. It was also in the early years of the Restoration that the merchants of Dartmouth and their associates were to be found appealing to parliament on exactly the same basis as they had been in the early years of James I. Dartmouth Corporation preserved a statement of 15 June 1661, signed by the clerk of the House of Commons. It noted that the Grand Committee for Grievances had reported a complaint made by the boroughs of Plymouth, Dartmouth, Barnstaple, Kingston-on-Hull, along with “several other parts of the kingdom” that by pretence of a patent for ballast, certain individuals and their agents were “demanding and exacting new duties and fees that were never known before”. Parliament’s response showed that its own view of what its powers should be in this area had not changed either. The Commons resolved that the new duties and fees were not to be collected until the matter had been investigated by the committee of grievances and reported to the House.102 We can suggest then that, during the 1630s, these boroughs would certainly have wished to address their interests in a parliamentary context, and would have been considerably inconvenienced by the fact that it was no longer available to them. Even in 1640 it is difficult to judge what initiatives would have been brought forward if the situation had been quickly normalised. In the event, the correspondence between the constituencies and the House soon became dominated by matters of security. Nevertheless, the Commons gamely confirmed their desire to maintain the continuity of a legislative programme, even after eleven years. On 7 November 1640, the House ordered a catalogue of the bills of the last three sessions of parliament to be brought in by the clerk.103 Moreover, some private bills were set on course towards the statute book, and 13 reached their destination.

148


One of these was an initiative from the city of Plymouth, which was seeking an act for confirmation of some letters patent for the building of a church.104 The city had begun to petition the king for permission to build a new church in 1634. It justified this on the basis of growing population, but it was probably also intended as an alternative to the existing Plymouth church, which had fallen into the hands of the high ceremonialist party. The proposal encountered much resistance, and it was not until April 1640, coinciding with the meeting of the Short Parliament, that Charles gave his consent. When parliament met again in November, the city sought a statute which would confirm the royal patent, settle the transfer of the advowson and establish the new parish boundaries.105 As regards other public bills, the Long Parliament was rather too occupied with political necessities to attempt much in the way of socio-economic legislation. One measure which did directly affect West Country interests, and which had a substantial economic aspect, was the act to deal with the persistent problem of the attacks on English shipping by Moorish pirates. This had occasioned great losses both in men and money to West Country merchants, and they had complained long and hard about it ever since the 1620s. In the act of 1641,106 the parliamentary leaders took the opportunity to spell out the royal government’s deficiencies in this area. The act noted that great sums had been raised through the customs without parliamentary consent, and suggested that if the customs had been legally raised, and thus subject to a degree of parliamentary supervision, they might have been used for their intended purpose – to protect the seas. Whether this would really have been so and whether the act would do much to solve the problem now was debateable. But from the Commons’ point of view, the political statement was probably the most important aspect of the measure. It was something of an irony that the Long Parliament was not really in a position to reinstate the service of socio-economic legislation that was the country’s most essential requirement of its representative institution. The legislative programme of 1640 had to concern itself largely with matters of financial provision and, of course, with dismantling the instruments of the Personal Rule of the 1630s. Nevertheless, the first session of the assembly did contain one very clear indication that the pressure and significance of the public demand for parliament’s services was, in a sense, still uppermost in the minds of MPs. The first, and arguably the most crucial piece of legislation brought forward by the Long Parliament, was the Triennial Act.

6 The Vacuum Filled: The Triennial Act of 1641

A new constitutional balance. The benefits of guaranteed assemblies: the core proposition of parliamentarianism. The significance of parliamentary law as “that which makes and constitutes a kingdom”: the practical and philosophical justification for a representative element in government. The question of the principal aims of the Long Parliament when it met in November 1640 is perhaps unnecessarily obscure. The topic has received rather restricted treatment, and has in a sense fallen between historical schools. Traditional or Whig historians, and indeed Marxists too, accepted that in the general context parliament’s challenge to the crown indicated an underlying momentum towards a greater representative element in government. But they did not really analyse or affirm the specific impulse in terms of political forms or constitutional psychology. Revisionist historians looked at motivation in greater detail but were predisposed to find that there was no demand for constitutional change. They tended to neglect that possibility, and concluded that parliament had no thought of altering its position relative to the king; and that MPs were simply intending to remove the agencies and methods of what they perceived as the innovative or “arbitrary” government of the 1630s, and return to normal.1 Counter-revisionist historians have made only minor adjustments to the latter view, putting greater emphasis on the long running constitutional tensions between king and parliament, but choosing not to interpret this as a basis for radical intent in 1640 – thus they still suppose that parliament was concerned to re-establish existing liberties, rather than press for change.2 149

150


As already indicated in the opening chapter of this volume, there has been a technical difficulty in escaping from the conservative view. Revisionist-empiricism asserted a methodology whereby any development that happened to be radical or “forward looking” was likely to be simply discounted as the product of hindsight. This study has rejected such assertions as doubly self-defeating. Historians were in danger of accepting an illusion of academic objectivity, while in the process denying themselves the freedom to recognise a real demand for representative forms. The central topic of the present chapter, the Triennial Act of 1641, is very much the kind of development likely to be suppressed under such a regime. In fact it can be suggested that the treatment of this measure by modern historians is a particularly clear illustration of the various blind spots of the empiricist approach. The Triennial Act was the first piece of legislation brought forward by the Long Parliament. It was pushed through during the first session, being introduced into the House on 24 December 1640 and reaching the statute book on 16 February 1641. It was by any standards a groundbreaking measure. Its purpose was to ensure that henceforth parliament would meet regularly and automatically, and no longer depend upon the king to call it into being. It thus points quite directly towards “the future” – that is, towards the new constitutional balance established at the end of the seventeenth century, when parliament became a permanent and inescapable presence in political affairs. In empiricist terms, of course, this might actually be taken as a reason not to credit the development. A generation of historians who were largely dependent on not seeing signs of the future in order to maintain the impression of looking at the past “as it was” would feel little compunction in assuming that the Triennial Act could not have been as significant as it appeared. But would not the Act be rather difficult to ignore? After all, its provisions were quite unequivocal. On the face of it, they simply did represent a radical change in constitutional convention, removing the king’s power to determine if and when parliament should come to life. But the close focus of empirical practice lends itself to a good deal of selective emphasis and “nuance”, and in this way it did not prove impossible for the revisionists to downplay the importance of the measure. It was indeed something that they needed to do if they wished to sustain their favoured interpretation of the period. For, as this chapter will argue, when the Triennial Act is looked at in an open and rounded manner, and given its full value, it counts very heavily against the view that the advancement of parliament was not wanted in the seventeenth century.

The Vacuum Filled: The Triennial Act of 1641 151

The bill was introduced by William Strode, who was again sitting for Bere Alston. Strode had particular reason to be grateful for the return of parliament – it had got him released from prison, where he had spent most of his time since his display of outspoken oppositionism in 1629. Strode however did not temporise on his criticism of the government in order to avoid being sent back to prison. He had a different kind of solution in mind. He was taking the lead in promoting a measure which would make parliament a permanent and unavoidable feature of political life. The Triennial Act was intended not only to ensure that the unacceptable governmental practices of the 1630s were brought to a halt, but also to create a new balance of power which would guarantee that they could never be repeated. Thus it was that on 24 December 1640, during the second month of the Long Parliament, Strode brought into the Commons what he described as “somewhat to comfort the people”3 – a bill to ensure that in future the meetings of parliament would be regular and automatic. As first introduced by Strode (and a certain Oliver Cromwell) the measure actually proposed guaranteed annual parliaments, but this was amended in committee to become triennial. The bill stated that from that time forth, if the monarch had failed to summon a parliament at the end of any three-year period, the Houses would assemble anyway, without the royal writ. To implement this, the measure gave statutory authority for the system of parliamentary elections to activate itself at any of its various levels. The Lord Chancellor, then the peers, then the sheriffs of the shires and boroughs were all given the power to set the process in motion. If all this failed, then authority was devolved upon the voters themselves, the ordinary freeholders, who “shall forthwith, without further warrant or direction, proceed to the election in such a manner as is usual”.4 This latter provision was really quite remarkable, given the hierarchical conventions of the time, and certainly seemed to underline Strode’s confidence that the act would “comfort the people”. The assumption of the popularity of the parliamentary project will find many echoes in the chapters ahead. As a rationale, the text of the bill noted that there were statutes from the reign of Edward III declaring that there ought to be a parliament held yearly, but “the appointing of the time and place thereof hath always belonged, as it ought, to his majesty, and his royal progenitors”. The problem was that in recent years there had arisen a wide divergence between king and parliament over the question of how often the assembly should meet. Therefore, the Act continued, since it had been “by experience found that the not holding of parliaments hath produced

152


sundry and great mischiefs and inconveniences”, it was proposed to make provision that in future, parliament could if necessary be convened without the king’s summons.5 The existence of the statutes of Edward III should not be allowed to disguise the radical nature of the Triennial Act. The earlier statutes related in any case to a different political balance, where the wishes of the Lords rather than the Commons were the principal parliamentary voice, and they did not attempt to challenge the residual discretion of the monarch to decide when parliament should meet. The Triennial Act therefore instituted a revolution in its own right. Parliament in its full representative character was for the first time assuming independent political life. For a logical summary of what this meant for the balance of the constitution we have to turn to the nineteenth-century Nottinghamshire historian, Thomas Bailey. He noted that the two statutes of Edward III “had been thought of merely as general declarations, dispensed with at the pleasure of the crown”. Which simply underlined the fact that before 1640 it had been recognised as the sole prerogative of the crown to decide when parliament should be summoned and dissolved. Bailey concluded that the Triennial Act therefore struck at the root of the monarch’s “hitherto acknowledged prerogative in the maintenance of that power over the proceedings of parliament in which the safety of the monarchy had been supposed to consist”. It was indeed “so great an innovation in the constitution as to form in itself a revolution of no ordinary degree of importance”.6 Bailey also suggested that the leading Nottinghamshire politician William Pierrepont was instrumental in bringing the measure forward. This idea depends on a particular interpretation of a reference in the memoirs of Lucy Hutchinson, but it was endorsed by Wallace Notestein, who pointed out that Strode and Pierrepont were often to be found working in unison on such matters. It is an interesting possibility that the two localities on which this study focuses may each have provided one of the principal promoters of the Triennial Act. Pierrepont was certainly to offer one of the clearest expositions of the belief in the sovereignty and necessity of parliamentary law that lay behind the drive for guaranteed, regular assemblies.7 Other kinds of radical movements could contribute to similar effects, if indirectly. At much the same time, there were events in the Scottish Revolution that make an illuminating comparison with developments in England. As part of the settlement of the Bishops’ Wars, the Scots demanded that their parliament should meet at least every three years. The political origins of the Scottish Triennial Act are however less easy


to trace than those of its southern counterpart Scottish parliamentary history was a relatively subdued affair. There is no sign of persistent threads or trends of opposition, or comparable institutional ambition, or public resort to representative forms. David Stevenson summed up the situation thus – “Scotland had no strong national myth of free parliaments like England.”8 Consequently, both James and Charles were able to manage and control the Scottish parliament with relatively little trouble. Stevenson describes the system of “lords of the articles” whereby the bishops and selected nobles were able to determine the business of the assembly on behalf of the king.9 It was a far cry from Westminster. In Scotland, James actually strove to enhance the status and authority of parliament to counterbalance the more independent elements among the churchmen and the nobles, which posed the only real challenge to royal power.10 The boast of being able to rule Scotland with a pen held good, until Charles decided in 1637 to write them a more ceremonial liturgy, and a more Episcopal set of rules for the church. It was then that the Scottish nation was roused to self-assertion. And the opposition was focused essentially on a combination of kirk and nobility.11 There was “no sign that those leading the agitation thought of holding a parliament as a necessary part of the settlement”.12 This is not to say that the Scots were without long-standing radical traditions. On the contrary, Calvinism, such a powerful force in the northern kingdom, was responsible for some of the most revolutionary political theories of the time. And among the leading evangelists in this respect were John Knox and George Buchanan. The latter made a particularly substantial contribution with his tract advocating a limited monarchy accountable to the people.13 Perhaps even more important, though less explicit, was the challenging notion that private citizens had the right and the capacity to make political decisions. The development of this idea was to be found in the writings of Knox as well as those of his English counterparts John Ponet and Christopher Goodman, and it has been well described by Michael Walzer, and Quentin Skinner.14 It was also hinted at in Alexander Henderson’s justification of the Covenanters’ stand in 1638.15 It is perhaps in the self-confident assertiveness of English MPs from 1603 to 1629 that we find the most obvious manifestation of the political effects of the assumption of a right of individual and public judgement. Although there are indications that the Scottish lairds were beginning to find a more independent voice in parliament from the 1620s, it did not have the same political force as in England. And when the Scots launched their challenge to the crown, it was shaped in a specifically

154


religious mould. It was the General Assembly of 1638 that defined the basis of the revolution, and established the Covenanters in power. And it was in the demand that General Assemblies should meet yearly that they first attempted to guarantee their position.16 A right of annual assembly, and freedom from royal authority, was indeed a standard claim of the more radical elements in the kirk. Parliament now became useful, however, as the civil arm of opposition. Charles was calling and dissolving assemblies largely as a means of gaining time. But in the revolutionary context of 1639, the royal government lost its usual command of business, and the Scottish parliament was inclined to keep itself in being despite the king’s attempt to prorogue it. These were the circumstances in which they passed an act declaring that more frequent parliaments had become necessary, and that in future they were to meet at least every three years.17 What the respective developments shared was a background of radical theory, in the personal, political implications of Calvinist systems, which reinforced the idea of participatory rights. This had most specific force in the English context, and in the end the differences are probably more instructive. Whereas the Scottish demand for guaranteed parliaments came as a way of consolidating a revolution with which it was not directly connected, the English version was the product of a steadily strengthening public requirement for representative forms of politics. The preceding chapter, on the 1620s, noted various ways in which the demand for parliamentary services showed the potential to become a political ambition. S.R. Gardiner picked out an earlier moment. He found it in a speech by Sir Edwin Sandys on 21 May 1614, condemning prerogative impositions on the basis that the original power of the crown came from “election”, and entailed a right of consent.18 In this Gardiner glimpsed “the first dawning of the idea that in order to preserve the rights of the subject intact, it would be necessary to make some changes in the relations between the authority of the crown and the representatives of the people”.19 It was a remarkable insight. Gardiner was pointing out that in order to guarantee the particular rights of consent that they now desired, the general principle of representation would need somehow to be consolidated within the structures of government. The most fascinating and the most difficult question is how far were these undercurrents apparent at the time. In the same sequence of debate, the issue of the power of assembling parliament came rather unexpectedly to the fore. When the Lords declined to join the assault on impositions, and Bishop Neile condemned the Commons as seditious for going on with it, the Lower House proposed to cease all other


business until this problem had been resolved. The king, perhaps somewhat oversensitive in the matter, sent a message reminding them that it was not their place to decide when assemblies should begin and end.20 Sir Roger Owen then confirmed, rather needlessly, that the “calling, dissolving and proroguing Parliaments is in the King’s only power”.21 This was the conventional wisdom. No doubt James was reassured. Underlying the exchange was the tension that Gardiner perceived. It was at these moments when the independent voice of parliament was strongest that the barrier to their political independence was highlighted. James’s successor also found early occasion to outline the facts of life in this respect. Just at the time that the “often abortions of parliament” was about to rise to the top of the Commons’ list of grievances, Charles took an opportunity to sum up his rights in the matter, perhaps rather too graphically for his own good. On 26 March 1626, the Commons were warned that they would be dissolved unless further supply was forthcoming, and the king concluded, Remember that parliaments are altogether in my power for their calling, setting and dissolution: therefore as I find the fruits of them good or evil, they are to continue or not to be.22 This probably had the very opposite of the desired effect. Making no promises on supply, the Commons pressed on with grievances. Charles had only succeeded in laying in problems for the future. With a few well, or ill chosen words he had described both the accepted constitutional position and the reason that parliament might want to change it. But changing it would not be easy. There were substantial disincentives to set against the advantages. The barriers to be overcome were not only those of tradition and hierarchical propriety, but also the longstanding habits of political convenience, which always plays a large part in the structures of obedience. There was a considerable technical difficulty in looking beyond the monarch as the initiating agent of the political process. In 1648, a Royalist pamphleteer put the case with unintended clarity: Who but a King can call and set a parliament, Who but a King can set a period to it?23 These words had practical as well as constitutional force. The difficulty is in fact clearly shown in the lengths to which the drafters of the Triennial Act were obliged to go to try to fill the gap. There was no

156


single alternative initiating agent on which they could call, so all the elements in the administration of the representative process were listed. This was certainly comprehensive, but there was no guarantee that an efficient authorising force would establish itself anywhere along the line. Some parliamentarians naturally remained dissatisfied with this level of security. In 1647, the Army’s treaty proposals confirmed the mechanisms of the Triennial Act, plus “what further or other provision shall be found needful by the Parliament to reduce it to more certainty”.24 In truth, certainty would only be achieved when the monarchy was in some way and to some significant degree subordinated to the concept, and it had itself become the convention. It was a very difficult constitutional hurdle, and the fact that the promoters of the Triennial Act in 1640 were prepared to tackle it underlines the significance of the measure. They were attempting a momentous and somewhat hazardous leap from the world of personal monarchy into the world of independent communal public authority. So as already suggested above, if you wish to believe that there was no will to change the constitutional balance in 1640 and no impetus for a rise of parliament, you have to ignore the Triennial Act, or at least to downplay its significance to the point where it can be quietly sidelined. And this, in effect, is what the revisionists have done. Thus, for instance, John Morrill notes that the Triennial Act was an early measure, but then defines his terms so as to exclude the act from parliament’s substantive programme of legislation. He prefers to think that the programme comprised just those statutes which outlawed the various instruments of “arbitrary” power employed by Charles in the 1630s, such as the fiscal expedients and prerogative courts. These statutes were not bought forward until the summer of 1641, and Charles was prepared to accept that in these instances his government had indeed overstepped the mark. Thus, by focusing on these measures and circumventing the Triennial Act, Morrill can conclude that when the Long Parliament met in 1640, its aims were “just an unhurried and uncontroversial programme of remedial legislation consciously intended to restore a lost balance no will to remodel the constitution”.25 Succeeding historians have not really challenged the main tenets of this version of events. Barry Coward, while conceding some ground to counter-revisionism, nevertheless supports Morrill’s view that legislative changes were not the priority, and there was no move to change the constitution.26 The assertion has built up a powerful momentum. Even Norah Carlin seems to accept the proposition that the priorities of the Long Parliament in


its first session were simply to remove the current crop of royal policies and councillors, and that the constitutional programme centred on the measures of mid-1641.27 It will be suggested below, however, that the Triennial Act was the clear and central priority of the Long Parliament, and that it certainly did change the balance of the constitution. Anthony Fletcher, in the seminal revisionist text on the outbreak of the Civil War, only mentioned the Triennial Act in passing, and suggested that in conjunction with the Act Against Dissolving the current assembly, it helped to ensure the survival of parliaments.28 The choice of word is characteristic. The revisionists place heavy emphasis on the danger of parliament falling into disuse, like other representative institutions in seventeenth-century Europe. Whether or not this could have actually happened in England, given the fiscal power of parliament and its constituent gentry, is a matter of doubt. The year 1614 contains an instructive comparison in this respect. On that occasion the French Estates General met, showed itself “manifestly useless to everyone”, and was not reconvened until 1789.29 In the same year, The Addled Parliament met in England, with a similar lack of achievement and a good deal more provocative self-assertion. Quite possibly the king would have liked to consign it to the scrap heap, in company with its French counterpart. A few days after the dissolution, he told the Spanish Ambassador that he was surprised that his ancestors “should ever have permitted such an institution to come into existence. I am a stranger and found it here when I arrived, so that I am obliged to put up with what I cannot get rid of.”30 This was the true statement of the case. James was only too well aware that the English parliament was different – it had its own kind of intrinsic strength. And to suggest that it was an ailing and declining body in danger of extinction gives precisely the wrong impression. Parliament’s position in England was distinctive precisely because of the level of positive support and demand that it enjoyed. The political nation wished the representative assembly to survive quite simply because they were coming to think of it as indispensable. It was not only regarded as the one legitimate medium for raising taxation, but more dynamically, as discussed at length in previous chapters, it was becoming essential for its unique service of binding legislation, whether for great national reforms or local economic provisions. In these circumstances it was as dangerous for the king to try to dispense with parliament, as it was difficult for him to try to put up with it. And it is not too surprising that Charles’s attempt to rule without calling assemblies between 1629 and 1640 seems to have had precisely the opposite effect that he may have intended or hoped. The political nation reconvened

158


in 1640, determined above all that they would not suffer another such “intermission” of parliaments. So it was that the Triennial Act became the first legislative measure of the Long Parliament, and the core of parliament’s reform programme. As Conrad Russell acknowledged, it was pushed through with an “unseemly haste” compared to the leisurely pace with which they approached the rest of the programme.31 This was because the Triennial Act was the essential basis of parliament’s solution. Before they sought to deal with the specific abuses of power, MPs wanted to put in place a means of ensuring that such things could never happen again. And politicians from right across the political spectrum were agreed that the fundamental problem that had to be addressed was the intermission of parliaments. Lord Digby called it the “cause causarum of all the mischiefs and distempers”. John Pym said the same: “The intermission of Parliaments is the main cause of all these and other mischiefs.”32 Clement Walker, another West Country figure, also blamed the “long discontinuance of parliaments”.33 Henry Parker noted that “the King’s failure to call Parliament is the grievance of grievances”.34 Sir Benjamin Rudyerd suggested that “Frequent Parliaments only are the Fountain” of pure government, and Edmund Ludlow stated simply that the Commons’ priority in 1640 was to ensure against the intermission of parliaments.35 Their means of achieving this was the Triennial Act. The great store they placed upon it was to be expressed most clearly in the euphoria with which they eventually greeted its passage. Rudyerd hailed it with the thought that “Things were now put into such a state that we could not well receive hurt but from ourselves.”36 Clarendon recorded that the act was passed “so much to the seeming joy and satisfaction of the two houses that they pretended to have sufficiently provided for the indemnity of the commonwealth”.37 Gilbert Burnet gave perhaps the best overall summary of the importance of the measure, illustrating both the strength of the desire behind it and the significance of its effects. It was, he said, “obtained with so much difficulty seemed to transfer the power from the crown to the people, that when it was carried it was thought the greatest security that the people had for all their liberties”.38 The sequence of events, and these evaluations of the importance of the measure in themselves leave little doubt that the Triennial Act was regarded as the centrepiece of parliament’s reform programme. But there are many other ways in which the act can be shown to have been of more crucial significance than modern historians have supposed. There has, for instance, been a widespread assumption that its genesis was as


a means of providing financial security for the loans needed to pay the armies in the north. This seems to have arisen largely from a mistaken association with the slightly later measure, the act against dissolving the current assembly without its own consent, which at least as a pretext did refer itself to the need for loan security. One of the most interesting examples of this supposition is in the work of Derek Hirst. His willingness to downplay the Triennial Act is perhaps rather surprising, since in other ways he has taken a distinctly counterrevisionist line. He did much to reinstate the notion that there were recurring conflicts of principle between king and parliament between 1600 and 1640, as parliament tried to establish its privileges as birthrights. And in a very distinguished and illuminating study of parliament’s representative function, he described how the institution was increasingly prepared to appeal to a (surprisingly wide) electorate, and how that confidence was reciprocated – until by the 1620s parliament had come to assume the mantle of physician of the realm in times of crisis, supplanting the monarch in that role.39 All of which would seem to suggest an appropriate background momentum to parliament’s desire to give itself a permanent place at the centre of government in 1640. Yet when Hirst comes to deal with parliament’s aims he accepts the general revisionist assumption that religion was the principal motivation, and he specifically downplays the significance of the Triennial Act: “The only reform to emerge in the first six months was the Triennial Act – and this furthermore, was passed primarily as a device to give security for loans for soldiers pay.”40 In suggesting this, he seems to have simply conflated the Triennial Act with the Act Against Dissolving the Current Assembly, and assumed that both “were grounded in the desire to obtain political security for loans”.41 The myth is still being uncritically repeated in textbooks.42 But in truth, there appears to be no actual evidence for such a connection. Valerie Pearl’s study of London in the Civil War confirms that loan security was a powerful impetus behind the Act Against Dissolving, but does not indicate a similar motive for the Triennial Act.43 Clarendon too makes no mention of loan security in connection with the Triennial Act, only with the Act Against Dissolving. In fact he indicates quite clearly that the latter association represented a new dimension. The negotiators with the city had reported “that there was no more hope of borrowing in the city; that men had before cheerfully lent their estates upon their confidence in the honour and justice of the two Houses; but they had now considered how desperate their security might prove if the two Houses were to be dissolved no way could be thought of so

160


undeniable as an Act of Parliament that this Parliament should not be (dissolved)”.44 The Triennial Act could not, and did not, offer that kind of assurance. In fact, until the time of the Act Against Dissolving, security for City loans had been provided by an arrangement by which MPs stood as personal guarantors. This was mentioned by Clarendon: “many particular Members being bound for great sums for which their estates were liable”.45 The sequence of events is given by Sir Simonds D’Ewes. On 21 November 1640, Alderman Pennington said there was already underwritten in the City £20,000, and more would be raised if security might be given. Mr. Treasurer moved that instant order might be taken to give security to the City. Divers members of the House of Commons, considering the great necessity of speedy supply of money to be raised by reason of the extreme danger of the English and Scottish armies in the North now in great want, have voluntarily engaged themselves for the several sums of £1000 or more apiece amounting in the whole to the sum of £100,000, till the act intended to be passed by the Houses for the granting of the raising of those said sums.46 In other words, as all the diarists confirmed, the guarantor arrangement was to provide security until the Subsidy Bill could be produced.47 It can therefore be seen that the Subsidy Bill, not the Triennial Act, was the real security for loans at this time. Indeed, in a sense it was possible that the Triennial Act might have had precisely the opposite effect. For the act was of such vital importance to MPs that they were prepared to use the Subsidy Bill, their only really effective political leverage, to force it through. In truth, the Triennial Act was only connected with loan security in as far as the Commons were prepared to clear the Subsidy Bill once the act had been accepted. But since they were also prepared to withhold the subsidy if the Triennial Act was not accepted, the act was potentially the greatest obstacle to loan security. In sum, the myth that has been generated by historians could scarcely be more misleading. The dependence of the subsidy on the passing of the Triennial Act was flagged up by William Strode when he introduced the first reading of the latter measure in the House: “That noised giving four subsidies that somewhat to comfort the people that act for yearly holding parliaments”.48 It is likely in fact that the Subsidy Bill had to be delayed while the Triennial Act was prepared. Anxiety was regularly expressed to see the Subsidy Bill brought forth. On 12 December, Sir John


Hotham urged the dispatch of monies for the north, and Alderman Pennington replied, “the speeding of the Bill of Subsidies will be first expected”.49 Two days later Hotham repeated his plea. The response was the same: “The City expect the passing of the Bill if the Bill were once read the money would be ready”.50 But the managers were not yet ready to bring the Subsidy Bill forward. Strode, centrally involved with the Subsidy Bill as well as the Triennial Act, moved that the City be asked to accept further intermediate security. As Sir Harbottle Grimston observed, this would once again be a matter of individual MPs giving guarantees, though in the end the City did not insist upon it.51 The Subsidy Bill was finally read on 22 December. It was two days later that the bill which became the Triennial Act received its first reading. The two bills became even more closely associated as time passed. They received their third readings and passage through the house on consecutive days and were carried up to the Lords together. At the climax of their careers they would be, as we shall see, placed in the closest possible proximity, and taken literally hand in hand up to the king. The leverage was needed, of course, because of the problem of getting the king’s assent to the act. Charles could hardly be expected to agree willingly to a measure which, in Burnet’s words, already quoted, “seemed to transfer the power from the Crown to the people”. At one level, MPs themselves must obviously have been convinced that on balance they were the winners in Burnet’s equation, and that the act was indeed “the greatest security the people had for all their liberties”. Nevertheless, they could not have been entirely happy with the constitutional violence involved in the measure. After all, they were overwhelmingly members of a landowning elite, whose position depended on the maintenance of the social hierarchy, which in turn depended principally on the position of the king at its apex. In an age when political action could not be defended in terms of progress but only in terms of restoration, how did they justify the radical exercise in which they were engaged? In general terms the answer is that they did not really attempt to justify it at all. They set aside whatever constitutional qualms and sensitivities they may have felt, and simply predicated their actions on their confidence in the capacities of their own assembly in the public arena, and the overriding necessity of establishing a permanent place for it in political life. The one thing that the Triennial Act would restore was the confidence of the country. Pragmatism was indeed the only basis on which they could have proceeded. If they had focused on the existing constitutional position they would have had to conclude that after all nothing could be done.

162


This was shown in the stance of one of the few MPs to express constitutionalist objections, the Commons’ principal stickler for legality, Sir Simonds D’Ewes. He was not afraid to protest that the act encroached on “fundamental rights of the crown which were to be preserved as well as fundamental rights of the subject”, but his informative account of the final two readings of the measure make it clear that the “great part of the house”, were not so scrupulous. On 24 December, said D’Ewes, “was read a bill about the assembly of a parliament yearly, though the King did not assemble it by writ. (This I misliked, but did forbear to speak against it till the second reading.)”52 Thus, he had clearly indentified the essential thrust of the bill, and the basis on which he intended to oppose it. The second reading came on 30 December, and was moved by Oliver Cromwell. D’Ewes now spoke out against the bill as he had promised himself. He said that he “hoped” that parliaments would be frequent in future, but he stuck firm to the conventional belief that this ought to be left to the discretion of the king, and that to undermine the prerogative by legislating for automatic parliaments would be “to promote a remedy worse than the disease”. These were the “fundamental rights of the crown which were to be protected as well as fundamental rights of the subject”. His basic premise was that only the king could possess the authority to initiate the political process. “All we did here had no light or force but by the King’s allowing of it.” It was a crystal-clear statement of the constitutional and psychological orthodoxy of the king as sole political initiator, which the measure was about to overturn – and which D’Ewes was vainly trying to defend. He asked for the bill to be “wholly withdrawn”.53 He said that many cried “well spoken” at this, and he was seconded by Sir John Wray (who could always be relied upon for an emotional response). But as D’Ewes recognised, the majority of the House was in a much less sentimental frame of mind, and the bill proceeded with no alteration to its essential provision for automatic assembly. D’Ewes also tried to dissuade the House from the measure by pointing out that if the conventional processes of organisation and supervision were undermined, the elections must “needs be full of disorder and confusion”. He suggested that if it ever came to the point where the parliamentary system had to be activated by the freeholders and citizens holding elections on their own authority the result would be chaos, and they would end up with 4000 MPs rather than the normal complement of 400. But on this occasion the threat of chaos did not seem to frighten


the gentlemen of the Commons as much as it might sometimes have done, and the provision remained in the bill. These warnings have sometimes been interpreted as indicating that technical concerns were the real, and indeed the only basis of D’Ewes’ doubts about the bill. Pauline Croft, for instance, has suggested that D’Ewes was generally in favour of the bill, except for the practical difficulties which he was seeking to iron out.54 But in truth, D’Ewes was raising the spectre of disorder to try to dissuade the House from its radical course. He could not have identified more plainly the anti-constitutional thrust of the bill, and could not have made it clearer that this was the basis of his opposition to it. He restated his position when the committee was chosen. He was nominated to be on the committee, “but I stood up myself and showed that because I had spoken against the body of the bill I could not be of the committee”.55 It was the rule of the House that when an MP opposed the essential thrust of a bill he could not sit on the committee for it. The committee did reflect the broad basis of support for the bill. It contained many of the leading parliamentary radicals – men like Strode, Pym, Cromwell and Harbottle Grimston, all of whom had already indicated their commitment to the measure in one way or another. It also contained future Royalists like Sir Francis Seymour and Lord Digby. Both of them were to play a leading part in the management of the bill, but would shortly thereafter take their first steps towards Royalism by coming to the defence of the Earl of Strafford. A similar pattern of sympathies was displayed by the brother of another committee member Humphrey Mildmay, whose case suggests a little more detail about the play of forces that was determining the attitudes of these men, and would eventually undermine the strength of the original consensus that had supported the first radical initiatives of the House. At home in Essex, Mildmay was delighted by “the joyful news of the Triennial Act”. He had also originally been prepared to countenance Strafford’s execution, but the growing threat of popular activism in Essex apparently caused him to change his mind in that respect.56 It may not be too much of an oversimplification to suggest that the power of “the people” as expressed in guaranteed parliaments was one thing, but the power of the people as exercised on the streets was another. The man who was to become the principal adviser to the displaced Stuarts, Sir Edward Hyde, also sat on the committee for the Triennial Bill. In his record of the event, produced some two decades later, he suggested, unsurprisingly, that he had not been entirely happy with the measure. He noted that it contained “some clauses very derogatory

164


to monarchic principles, as giving the people authority to assemble together if the King failed to call them”.57 It is instructive to find that he identified the essential thrust of the bill in much the same way as D’Ewes, but there is no indication that he joined with the latter in voicing his objections at the time. Indeed, his presence on the committee would indicate that at the very least he did not express outright opposition. It seems that Hyde was in much the same situation as many other future Royalists – suspending his more conservative instincts while the overriding need to establish parliament as a regular feature of political life was carried through. Later, in his record of the event he consoled himself with the thought that the king was happy to pass the measure because he intended to call triennial parliaments anyway! In truth, this did not represent Charles’s real reaction to the bill, nor did it recognise the powerful pressures that were brought to bear to get him to accept it. What it did reflect was the polite fictions to which MPs were obliged to resort to when they tried to square the Triennial Act with the constitutional rights of the crown. It is the stance of Lord Digby that most clearly reveals the tactical evasions by which socially conservative figures were reconciling themselves to the measure. At the third reading of the bill, it was Digby who made the crucial keynote speech. His intervention was not only a sign of the broad consensus in the House, but also the most powerful means of sustaining that united front. If anyone could put the full weight of conservative society behind the bill, it was Digby. His approach was simple, and indeed rather dictated itself. He was not going to deal much with the constitutional implications of the measure, he said, but simply focus on the practical necessity: I rise now not with any intent to speak to the frame and structure of this bill, nor much by way of answer to objections that may be made. I hope there will be no occasion of that but that we shall all concur unanimously in what concerneth all so universally.58 In other words, they could not afford to be too fussy about the constitutional niceties because the pragmatic common interest in the passing of the bill was simply undeniable. Nor, he went on, should they be deterred by the fact that there would be others who might not be able to suppress their objections: That we may not be discouraged in this great work by difficulties that may appear in the way of it, I shall deliver to you my apprehensions


in general of the vast importance and necessity that we should go through with it. This was to say that he recognised that the king was not going to accept the bill willingly, but it was vital to proceed nonetheless. He then described with great power and clarity exactly what made this a “great work” – he outlined the growing estimation of the value of parliament in public life, which underpinned the desire to make its assembly automatic: Let us rightly consider the nature of our sufferings since the third of his reign and there can be no cause inventible whereas to attribute them but the Intermission of Parliaments As the deficience of Parliaments hath been the cause causarum of all the mischiefs and distempers, so the frequency of them is the sole antidote that can preserve and secure the future from the like danger. Unless for the frequent convening of parliaments there can be some such course settled as may not be eluded, neither the people can be prosperous and secure, nor the King himself solidly happy. The phrase “as may not be eluded” encapsulates the radical intent of the measure, and the single-minded determination that lay behind it. The absence of parliaments had confirmed their indispensability. MPs now had to ensure that there could be no such intermission in the future. Digby did not conclude without some soothing gestures to those in the House whose constitutional qualms might not have been entirely stilled by the appeal to absolute necessity: “Let no man object any derogation from the King’s prerogative by it; we do but press the bill, ‘tis to be made law by him.” This was perfectly true. The measure would need to have the force of statute, and therefore depended on the king’s consent. What Digby failed to mention was that they planned to apply the most powerful coercion available to them to force Charles’s hand. He went on to suggest, even less convincingly, that if and when the king did consent, he would be losing nothing of his prerogative by it because “his honour, his power will be as conspicuous in commanding at once that a parliament shall assemble every third year, as in commanding only a parliament to be called this or that year”. To the modern ear, the idea that the king could maintain his prerogative over parliaments by using it all up at once sounds like adding insult to injury. But to seventeenthcentury MPs who had already assimilated the practical necessity of

166


the measure, any suggestion that seemed to present it as something other than a direct contradiction of the royal prerogative was probably welcome. It was, unsurprisingly, the king who found it most difficult to reconcile himself to the Triennial Bill. Charles was indeed the main “difficulty which may appear in the way of it”, and the reason why Burnet later described it as “obtained with so much difficulty”.59 The king made no secret of his objections. Three days after the third reading, he assembled the two Houses to explain to them “the state of my affairs, my own clear intentions, and the rocks I wish you to eschew”.60 He began by reproaching them for their delay in providing the money to deal with the military emergency. He then indicated that to satisfy them, he was prepared to allow “the reformation of all innovations both in church and commonwealth”. By this he meant that he had accepted that the courts of justice should be reformed “according to law”, and that any illegal or overburdensome fiscal expedients should be discontinued. But he then went on to define a “difference between reformation and alteration of government” – a distinction which he thought was in danger of being overlooked by the Commons. He pointed out two unconstitutional demands, or “rocks”, on which he thought constructive agreement on finance and reform might founder. One rock was the proposal that the bishops should be excluded from the House of Lords. The other was the Triennial Bill: The thing I like well, to have frequent Parliaments; but to give power to sheriffs and constables and I know not what whom to use my authority, that I cannot yield unto. He said he would agree to the measure only if it was amended “so that it trench neither against my honour, nor against the Ancient Prerogative of the Crown concerning Parliaments”.61 As William Clarke noted in his diary, Charles had plainly indicated that in its essential form, making parliaments automatic, “he would no ways consent to it”.62 Some historians have nevertheless managed to convince themselves that Charles was amenable to the Triennial Bill. Conrad Russell, for instance, interprets the king’s statements as if he was agreeing to the measure in principle and only objecting to some of the details.63 Russell seems to be suggesting that when Charles said he would “like” to have frequent parliaments, he had agreed to the essential thrust of the measure; and his demur at the idea of losing his power to actually decide whether or when the assembly should meet was but a minor quibble.


In truth, of course, history showed that Charles did not like parliaments very much at all, and the whole purpose of the Triennial Bill was to ensure that the king’s pleasure was no longer the decisive factor in their assembly. The essential thrust of the measure was its intention to take the assembling of parliaments out of his hands, and Charles had clearly, and understandably, stated that this was unacceptable to him. Further evidence, if needed, of the king’s opposition to the measure can be found in the Venetian ambassador’s description of subsequent events. He noted how the Commons, undaunted by Charles’s first reaction, had sent a deputation to petition him to satisfy them without delay regarding the Triennial Bill: The King, moved by this action, the effect of which would be to ruin his authority entirely, became very angry and displayed very little inclination to consent. He sent back the Members with a severe message. When the Members made their report, Parliament was seriously moved. Throwing aside all restraint they loudly threatened the most extreme designs and that they would suspend all business until they obtain this satisfaction, unjust as it is.64 The two sides had made their true positions on the matter clear, and it threatened to leave them in a state of confrontation. The Commons held their nerve, and the bill remained unaltered. In the end, it was the king who had to give way, though not without reiterating his unhappiness with the situation. When he came to ratify the bill, he reminded them, “I did declare unto you two rocks which I wished you to eschew: this is one of them.”65 He said that as they had not seen fit to avoid this rock, he was himself obliged to remove it from the path by consenting to their demands.66 He thought that “never bill passed here in this House of more favour to subjects than this is”.67 He concluded by describing the effects of the bill from his own point of view. This was not to reproach them, he said, “but to show you the state of things as they are: you have taken the government all in pieces; and I may say it is almost off the hinges”.68 It was an accurate enough description of what was happening. Charles obviously recognised that the measure altered the balance of the constitution in favour of parliament. What had induced him to give way? There are indications that Henrietta Maria may have been instrumental in the decision. Later in 1641, some of the peers tried to persuade the Commons to relax their pursuit of one of the Queen’s Catholic advisers on the grounds that she had helped to obtain the

168


passage of the Triennial Act. Clearly, if his wife had come to accept the necessity of acceding to the Commons’ demands, it would at a personal level have eased the way for Charles to contemplate the move. And in fact, there was a quite powerful, pragmatic rationale that could be made for it. Although the king would be consenting to a change in the constitution to the obvious detriment of his authority, it was a change that he might later find some means of reversing or avoiding. That kind of tactic was certainly not absent from Charles’s armoury. And if he did not consent to the bill, he faced immediate disaster and humiliation in respect of his military position in the north. His financial needs had become pressing indeed. On 10 February, Sir John Hotham reported to the House that £25,000 was needed for the king’s army, and £52,000 to pay off the Scots. Both demands became due on 16 February. It was on that very day that the Triennial Act and the Subsidy Bill reached the statute book. The Subsidy Bill was the only measure that could provide the financial security against which the king’s military obligations could be met, and the Commons had made it dependent on the Triennial Act. The Venetian ambassador again provides the most cogent guide to the determining factors in the king’s stance: “The King was informed of everything and after he had carefully considered for many hours the ruinous effects that a longer resistance would produce, he yielded to necessity and decided to comply.”69 The precision with which the Commons attached the Subsidy Bill to the Triennial Act is worthy of note. They left nothing to chance. After all, they had only the one shot, and they could not afford to miss. They were certainly not content to simply state their wishes and trust the king to do as they desired. As Sir Nathaniel Rich had pointed out when they faced a similar quandary over the Petition of Right in 1628, they had to guard against the possibility that the king might simply accept the Subsidy Bill while rejecting the other.70 Now, as then, trusting the king was precisely what the Commons were not prepared to do. D’Ewes noted “a long dispute about how we should desire his majesty’s assent to the Triennial Bill”. The first step, on 15 February, was a deputation to the Lords led by Sir Francis Seymour “to desire them to intimate to his Majesty their desire and ours that his majesty would be pleased to give his assent to the bill of Triennial Parliaments when he gives his assent to the Bill of subsidies”.71 The Lords duly picked up the implication that “the bill of subsidies might receive some prejudice”, if the Triennial Bill were not passed.72 When, later that afternoon, the expectation that he should pass the two bills simultaneously was first put to


the king, the response was not all that reassuring. “He answered surlily that they should have his answer the following day”.73 But if the king was prepared to keep his cards close until the last, so were the Commons. They were literally going to hold on to their money until they were sure that they had got what they were paying for. The commentators who recorded that the parliamentary leaders were careful that the bill of Subsidies should go hand in hand with the bill for Triennial Parliaments, meant exactly that. The Commons kept a firm physical grip on the Subsidy Bill until the king had confirmed that he intended, there and then, to consent to the Triennial Bill: The King spake that he was come this day to express the greatest love and respect ever a King expressed to his people yielding up one of the fairest flowers in his garland, for he intended to give his royal assent to the passing of the act for the holding of a parliament every three years. He therefore hoped that we having received such large testimonies of his goodness to us would therefore begin to think of him. After this speech, our speaker, having made our reverences, spake to the effect that we had come this day to manifest the good love And affection of a loyal and dutiful people to present his sacred majesty with the free gift of 4 entire subsidies and so he delivered up the subsidy bill, which he had held all the time before in his hand, to one of the Lords then his majesty first passed the bill for Triennial Parliaments, and afterwards the bill for subsidies.74 The circumstances in which the bill finally passed into law further illustrated the context in which it was conceived. It was clearly recognised that the measure was an attack on the royal prerogative, and that the king could not be expected to accept the removal of his discretion over parliaments willingly. But to the Commons it was an absolute necessity, and they were prepared to do literally everything in their power to ensure its safe passage. Their sense of achievement was correspondingly great, and reflected in a general celebratory atmosphere. D’Ewes noted that “upon our return to our own House, Mr. Holles began, and said that we had great cause to rejoice in this day’s work”.75 William Drake echoed the mood of elation: “There is none of so mean a heart but is delighted with joy at this day’s gracious assent.” The Commons asked the Lord Keeper “to give his Majesty humble thanks in the name of ourselves and the whole kingdom, which is of singular comfort and security”.76 The assumption that “the whole Kingdom” would share their joy expressed

170


their confidence in their own representative capacity, and indeed the understanding of public opinion which it gave them – echoing Strode’s original suggestion that it was “somewhat to comfort the people”. Public celebrations were recorded in Coventry, as well as in the capital.77 “That night there were great acclamations of joy in and about London, by order from the Parliament, with ringing of bells, making of fires, for the King’s so cheerfully signing the two bills.”78 The picture of the cheerful king creates another polite fiction. In truth, it might be said without too much exaggeration that Charles was one of the few people in England who did not welcome the Triennial Act. Thus a review of the evidence on the passage of the measure leaves little doubt of its central importance. It was the essential core of parliament’s reform programme. It aimed to ensure the future “goodness” of government as defined by the parliamentary classes, and to this end it re-balanced the constitution in favour of the representative assembly. The persistent neglect of this by so many modern historians is perhaps the single most distorting aspect of recent interpretations of the Civil War period. The ultimate gauge of the significance of the Triennial Act is the particular force and effect that MPs thought it would have. It is clear enough that those who had promoted the measure did believe, as Clarendon said, that they had “provided for the indemnity of the Commonwealth”.79 They thought that they had eliminated the threat of a repetition of the undesirable governmental practices of recent times. But precisely how did they think that the introduction of guaranteed, regular parliaments was going to achieve this end? There is a clue in Rudyerd’s suggestion that with the passage of the act “things were now put into such a state that we could not well receive further hurt but from ourselves”.80 There is rather more implied here than simply ensuring that parliament was regularly on call as “physician of the realm”. There is a clear hint that MPs assumed that parliament would now have some regular influence over government at the point of delivery. They would be in a position to avert unacceptable ministerial policies. They would be, in some sense, in control. Revisionist historians have been inclined to suppose that it was only in the winter of 1641–1642, under the pressure of events such as the Irish Rebellion, and the attempt to arrest the five members, that the parliamentary leadership began to assert a claim to supervise the king’s choice of ministerial and military appointments. But in fact it can be shown that the provision of automatic parliaments was itself expected to give the Houses a


significant and continuous influence over the conduct, if not the choice, of royal advisers. A speech by Edward Bagshaw gave an early indication of how this was expected to work. He laid the blame for their troubles, inevitably, at the door of the hapless “evil counsellors”, but went on to suggest that there was a certain environment in which these notorious bad influences could never flourish – “now, during Parliament, like frozen snakes, their poison dries up, but let the parliament dissolve, their poison melts and scatters abroad”.81 Sir Benjamin Rudyerd made exactly the same point in his opening speech, with equal pungency. He hoped that their remedy for the sores on the body politic would be a lasting one: “not to skim them over with a slight, suppurating, festering cure, lest they break out again into a greater mischief”.82 It was later, in his speech about the bishops, that Rudyerd drew a direct link between the Triennial Act and the aim of exerting some kind of regular influence over the activities of officials. He felt that they could afford to take a moderate line over the future of episcopacy. There was no need to abolish the bishops, he said, it would be sufficient simply to give them stricter guidelines. After all, there was now a new kind of assurance that they would not step out of line – “the absolute certainty of Triennial Parliaments”.83 This then was what Rudyerd meant when he said that MPs “could not well receive further hurt” but from themselves. Guaranteed regular assemblies would suffice to ensure that the general desires of parliament were paramount in official calculations. The plainest, and indeed the boldest, illustration of this purpose came once again in Digby’s speech on the third reading, when he stated explicitly that one of the principal justifications for enforcing regular parliaments was the permanent constraints that this would impose on the activities of royal counsellors: “wicked counsellors have been the proximate cause of our mischiefs, but the want of Parliaments, the primary, the efficient cause”. He thought that the king could now be relied upon to remove the current crop of wicked counsellors. But the policies and methods of government they had encouraged were so insidious that the future could no longer be left to chance: If there be not a way found to keep them good, the mischiefs will all grow again it is the opportunity of being ill that we must take away, if ever we mean to be happy, which can never be done but by the frequency of parliaments In chasing ministers we do but dissipate clouds that may gather again, in passing this bill we shall contribute so much as is in our power, to the perpetuation of our sun no state

172


can be confident of a public minister continuing good, longer than the rod is over him.84 The intention of permanently influencing the exercise of government could not have been more plainly stated. And to fail to recognise this leaves a crucial gap in our understanding of what the Long Parliament was about. Once again, we are witnessing one of the mechanisms, or stages, of the transition in political psychology that was taking place. It is most unlikely that Digby would have approved the idea of claiming a direct say in the king’s choice of ministers. But clearly he did believe and hope that the Triennial Act would achieve much the same effect. It was assumed that the permanent position of parliament as the rod in the corner would ensure that ministers were inclined to pursue policies that the representative body of the nation might consider acceptable. And we may well suppose that there were quite a few MPs already prepared to go further than Digby, and contemplate more explicit means if necessary. It was a much shorter step than recent historians have thought from the Triennial Act to the demand for a veto over royal appointments that the Commons’ leaders began to make in the winter of 1641–1642. This also casts a rather harsh light on a particular revisionist suggestion that in the early months of the session, opposition forces like the Bedford group were proposing the “very conservative solution” that good government would be ensured if Charles would simply give the major offices of state to them.85 In truth the evidence for this theory is rather slim, and in any case to place such emphasis upon it is to sadly underestimate the genuine breadth of the parliamentary leaders’ intentions. Their basic recipe for good government was rather less selfserving, considerably more lasting, and certainly more radical than just a particular set of immediate appointments. They sought instead the permanent influence of regular representative assemblies. And there was another perhaps even more important way in which the Triennial Act was expected to influence the process of government. It would give public administration a distinctly different balance, or substance. For it would provide that facility that had been so much missed since 1610 – that is a frequent and guaranteed opportunity for parliament to exercise what had become its most positive and widely valued function, the process of legislation. The link between the Triennial Act and the demand for the scope to legislate freely is quite specific, as will appear below. But to understand clearly how the legislative process attained this degree of importance and desirability, it may help to remind ourselves of the dynamic from which it grew.


At the beginning of the sixteenth century the role of positive law was in every way a very circumscribed affair. It was a rarely used function, scarcely related to the actual exercise of government, and limited in its scope by rival systems such as canon and customary law. But in England, in the middle of the sixteenth century, the status of positive law was transformed. When Henry VIII, in his innocence, set out to get himself a new wife and a male heir, he laid in a highly distinctive inheritance for his kingdom. The concept of legislative sovereignty created by the divorce from the Church of Rome was a remarkable phenomenon – an autonomous, omni-competent law-making authority, with parliament at its core. To trump the law of the church, Henry and his ministers had been obliged to look beyond the command structures of the monarchy. They had to recruit the moral authority of the representative capacity of the House of Commons.86 And it was from the idea of universal consent that the new concept of universally binding sovereign law derived its force. There was an obvious radical potential in the paradoxical association of sovereignty and representation. By the same token, it could actually be accentuated by more conservative views. When Jean Bodin, also in his innocence, sought to underline the absolute power of the French crown, he suggested that the right to legislate was the principal mark of indivisible sovereignty. His theory was authoritative in England, but it worked in a direction that he would not have intended. It consolidated the view that “unlimited” power was dependent on representative consent – a contradiction that was most clearly expressed in the widely accepted notion that the king was at his most absolute in parliament.87 Divine Right theorists saw the danger, and attempted to reclaim the rights of legislative sovereignty for the crown.88 They had limited success, and many historians have noted that the sovereignty of parliamentary law became the orthodoxy.89 But this should not be allowed to obscure the underlying radical thrust of the fact that the political nation had so readily embraced the concept. It had a distinctive dual force. The evaluation of the importance of parliament’s share in legislative sovereignty grew alongside the perception that the most effective guarantee of both public and private interests was the definitive lawmaking service that the assembly could provide. The concept could thus suggest an alternative balance of government in both a practical and a philosophical sense. By the early seventeenth century, the public demand for this service had become much too great for parliament in its present position to satisfy, even when at its most productive, as from 1603 to 1610.

174


Although the increasing political and financial tensions between crown and Commons meant that after 1610 the opportunity for legislation almost disappeared, the public estimation of the need for it did not. On the contrary, by 1621 there was emerging a conflict of interest between a House of Commons with an extensive programme of vital legislation to put through, and a monarch for whom this was not a priority. Only in 1624 was real scope allowed, and this produced so many proposals that “if every day were a week yet would be little enough time to determine them, and many will come short of their expectations”.90 Even this was only half the story. Expectations were taking on a new dimension. Parliament’s legislative service was no longer just a passive and easily dispersible aggregate of minor business, but was coming to be projected as an ongoing public requirement. In this context, the relative lack of interest in the matter displayed by the royal administration could appear as an abdication of an important aspect of the good governance of the realm. This was shown clearly in the statements and attitudes of people like Sir Nathaniel Rich and Walter Yonge, and was a sentiment that was sometimes recognised, though not acted upon, in royal circles.91 The elevation of the legislative process into a vital provision of government is the best way of defining the momentum that underpinned the Triennial Act, the provisions of which sought to ensure that parliament would henceforth be in a position to offer a regular service in these respects. The connection is not in any degree speculative, but stated explicitly in 1640, by some of the leading MPs who despite the intermission of parliaments (or perhaps because of it) were coming to regard parliamentary legislation as a simple necessity. To suppose that the legislative power was not at issue in 1640 is thus to take a very partial and restrictive view of the matter. The radical thrust of the concept is indicated by the fact that royal apologists had not given up trying to challenge it. Like most Divine Right theorists, the Canons of 1640 tried to turn the issue in the king’s favour by asserting that legislative sovereignty belonged to the crown, and parliament’s place in the legislative process was a royal concession.92 Nathaniel Fiennes in the Commons in December 1640 felt the need to rebut the Canons and restate the orthodox view. Legislation was “the greatest power”, he said, and parliament held its place in the legislative process not by royal permission as the Canons had suggested, but rather “in the frame and fabric of the polity”.93 The latter phrase carried the clear implication of a more permanent parliamentary presence in political life. This position was endorsed even by future Royalists in the House, including Lord Digby, who in his speech on the third reading of the


Triennial Act outlined how parliament’s undoubted share in legislative sovereignty could, naturally enough, strengthen the justification for making parliaments automatic: Where is the power of imposing taxes? Where is the power of restoring from incapacities? Where is the legislative authority? Marry, in the King. But how? In the King encircled in, fortified and evirtuated by his Parliament. The King out of Parliament hath a limited, a circumscribed jurisdiction, but waited on by his Parliament, no monarch of the east is so absolute.94 The grand paradox that the king was limited without parliament, but absolute within it, was now finding its natural resolution in an enhanced role for the representative assembly at the centre of affairs. The practical need for parliament’s unique legislative service, and the pre-eminence which legislation held in the theory of sovereignty, combined as a powerful justification for giving the institution a permanent place in government. Fittingly enough, it was John Pym, the leading architect of Parliamentarianism, who made the most explicit connection between the Triennial Act and the growing significance of the legislative function. Pym was another West Country figure. He came from a well-established Somerset family, though, like Rich, he is best regarded as a career politician. In 1640 he was MP for the Devon constituency of Tavistock, just a few miles from Bere Alston, and had been a close associate of William Strode since the 1620s. We know that as early as 1621, Pym was stating his belief that legislation was the principal purpose of parliament. Revisionists have, as ever, glossed this to mean that parliament’s business was about “bread and butter” issues, and not about government. It is much more likely that even at that stage, Pym was seeking to underline the importance of legislation and of parliament in the governmental process. Certainly by 1641, Pym had come to regard legislation as the very basis of government. On 26 February, 10 days after the Triennial Act had been passed, he presented the case against Archbishop Laud. One of the charges was that Laud had been instrumental in persuading the king to avoid calling parliament for the last eleven years. He had thereby not only divided the king from his people, said Pym, he had contrived to “bereave this kingdom of the legislative power, which can only be used in parliaments and which is the only means to restore it from distempers and decays”. To Pym, legislation had come to define the very function of the state. It was, he said, “that which makes and

176


constitutes a kingdom”. He was saying, in effect, that the country could no longer afford to be without it. So it was quite understandable that they should seek a means to ensure that it could never be excluded from the process of government again. Thus it was that the provision of automatic parliaments was ultimately justified. The sovereign power of legislation was now seen to derive its force from the principle of representation, and parliament’s services in that area had become absolutely essential to the regulatory framework of the kingdom. Pym could therefore conclude by thanking the king for passing the Triennial Act, which, he assured Charles, would put his honour and his crown on a sound basis for the future.95

7 Politics and Religion: The Balance of Motivation

“The Song of the Puritans of Nottingham”. The spirit of initiative among the Godly, and the shared belief in the power of assent. The implication of what has been argued above is that the English Revolution was set on foot at the very beginning of the Long Parliament in 1640, and arose from a combination of secular causes. The public perception of the significance of parliament’s legislative function, both in terms of socio-economic needs and practical political ideas, had produced a determination among MPs to provide the representative assembly with a regular and guaranteed place at the centre of affairs. This purpose took shape in the Triennial Act, which was the core of the Long Parliament’s programme of reform when it met in 1640, and radically altered the constitution. It was also expected to give parliament a constant and effective degree of influence over the activities of the king’s ministers, prefiguring the specific claims for a voice in royal appointments which would be heard a few months later. Since historians began to discount the possibility that parliament had any constitutional ambition when it met in 1640, the problem has arisen of deciding exactly when the English Revolution began. The revisionist premise was indeed to deny the whole idea of revolution if possible. But they were obliged to face the fact that by the end of the decade the king had been executed, and the political and ecclesiastical hierarchy overturned in favour of a republic, which seemed a revolutionary course of events by any standards. The revisionists might still claim that this was just functional radicalism generated by the pressure of events or religious fervour, and not the product of a real desire for political change. They 177

178


nevertheless had to explain precisely when and how the supposedly conservative aims of 1640 were transformed into a revolution. It was not an easy question. Any selected date, or stage, was likely to be somewhat arbitrary. The most usual answer was to regard the revolution as encompassed in the winter of 1648–1649 since that was when the most patently revolutionary acts took place.1 This is the necessary line if the historian is determined to dismiss the idea that the activities of the Long Parliament were always constitutionally radical. But this study sees no such limitation. The aims of 1640 were not conservative. The revolution could and did begin in the winter of 1640–1641, or whenever the parliamentary leadership began to lay definite plans to legislate for automatic assemblies. As a corollary, this is to suggest that the revolution led to the Civil War, which again is the reverse of what historians have generally come to suppose. Although contemporaries like James Harrington did believe, famously, that “the dissolution of this government caused the war, and not the war the dissolution of this government”,2 most modern historians have chosen to disagree with this analysis, and have preferred to assume that the revolution was more the consequence than the cause of the war. This volume however has already found many reasons to support Harrington’s view – that is to say, the radical initiatives of the first session of the Long Parliament did alter the balance of political and constitutional authority. And that same momentum was closely and significantly reflected in the original and underlying issue of the Civil War. The next three chapters will look at the ideas and careers of some leading parliamentarians from the two localities on which the study has focused, to describe how the early initiatives were elaborated in statements of motivation, and how these patterns of belief and allegiance worked themselves out during the course of the Civil War and the revolutionary years. Harrington was not alone in supposing that the war resulted from a dispute about secular power. This was the view most widely expressed among contemporaries. But modern historians have again been generally unimpressed with this consensus, and have not scrupled to contradict it. As we have seen, the starting point for revisionists was to discount the idea of constitutional conflict. But faced initially with the charge that in dismissing this they had explained why the Civil War did not happen and why the king was not executed, they have usually been inclined to turn to religion as the principal activator of the struggle.3 Local county studies have also tended to associate parliamentarian support with Puritanism.4 One of the most recent, and in the context of the

Politics and Religion: The Balance of Motivation 179

present volume most relevant, is a study of Devon. In this, Mark Stoyle tends to some extent towards a counter-revisionist view, suggesting that parliamentarian support referred itself to both religious and political liberties. He sums this up with a quote about the town of Barnstaple, which was said to have “more blades for Religion and Liberties than any town in England”.5 He goes on to say that most historians now agree that religion and liberties were inextricably connected in oppositionist sentiment from 1625 to 1640. However, he still interprets the struggle for liberties in a conservative light, as a defence of existing rights which had supposedly been under assault in the 1630s. Furthermore, he concludes that since it was the Puritans who were often the staunchest in defence of liberties, therefore the central issue could after all be seen as religious rather than constitutional!6 This seems to illustrate the place of religion as the fallback position for recent historians. But we might suggest that the opposite conclusion follows more logically from the proposition as stated. If the concern for political rights was a common perspective which was shared by parliamentarians who were Godly, as well as by those who were not, this is surely a further indication that liberty was indeed the central issue, as most commentators then supposed. Some of the many statements to that effect will be referred to below. In view of the prominent role that religion has been given in modern interpretations, it is important to clarify this question in terms of the present volume. The significance of the religious dimension in the life of the time cannot be denied, and even if we suppose that it did not provide the initiating or defining impulse of the revolution, this is not to say that it played no part. Godliness made an important contribution to the development of the psychology of participatory rights that is the underlying theme of this study. The advance of the representative principle had always had a moral aspect, though of an essentially secular character. When Henry VIII and his ministers sought an alternative source of “truth” to trump the pre-eminence of the church, they found it in the capacity of parliament to reflect “universal” consent; and a new kind of omni-competent sovereign legislative power was created on that basis. The moral force of the representative concept had been set free. It received a further powerful boost from the growing assumption of “absolute” property rights – the insistence that possessions could not be taken or taxed by compulsion, but only by consent. This carried the important implication that there was some right of judgement of the cause. A not dissimilar psychological pattern was emerging in the field of religious observance. The preceding chapter introduced the idea that Calvinist systems tended to justify or liberate the political judgement of the

180


private individual. The principle of the equality of believers also played an influential role in Calvinist church organization;7 though, paradoxically, the importance that the exercise of initiative came to acquire for English Puritans probably owed much to the fact that the English church proceeded only gradually and partially to doctrinal reformation, and the “hotter” kind of Protestants were always to some extent operating on the margins. Both Nottinghamshire and Devon offer instructive examples of expressions of the balance of motivation, and the character of the Godly contribution to the cause. One of the most important sources for the question of allegiance in the Civil War is the work of Lucy Hutchinson. She had married into one of the few upper gentry families to support the parliamentary cause in Nottinghamshire, and her husband John became the commander of the Nottingham garrison. It was from that point of view that Lucy wrote her memoir of the conflict. She is best known as one of the many commentators to note that parliament depended on the support of the “middling sort”. It was not an impressionistic assessment. She had, for instance, the evidence of the social composition of a parliamentarian petition of the spring of 1642. This urged the king to return to his parliament, and was carried to him at York by a deputation led by her husband. It was said to have borne 4500 names of knights, gentlemen, yeomen, freeholders, and the mayor, alderman and other inhabitants of Nottingham. It was an impressive sample. She also talked about the balance of motivations displayed by John Hutchinson himself. In particular, she gave a precise description of her husband’s state of mind as the two sides of the dispute were beginning to polarise in the winter of 1641–1642. She said that he was “convinced in conscience of the rightness of the Parliament’s cause in point of civil right”. And she declared that although he was aware of the threat to “the true Protestant religion. Yet he did not think this so clear a ground for the war as the defence of the just English liberties.”8 For herself, she endorsed the view set out in the official history of the early stages of the conflict by the Long Parliament secretary, Thomas May.9 He wrote that the basic provocation was the tendency of both James and Charles to govern in unparliamentary ways. In fact, he asserted that the latter had “trodden under foot” the “authority of parliament, by which laws and liberties are supported”.10 This was a very illuminating comment, showing exactly how parliamentary assertiveness had developed above and beyond the claim for ancient liberties. James and Charles might reasonably have defended themselves on the basis that they had not been aware that there was any such thing as the authority of parliament.


It is sometimes suggested that works such as Lucy Hutchinson’s, published long after the event, are not to be taken as a precise reflection of the time of which they speak. It is a useful warning. But there is perhaps a greater danger of allowing the mere fact of retrospective publication to lead us to suppose that the work has no direct significance. For one thing, the date at which a book is actually published is not necessarily a very good guide as to when it was originally conceived or set down. For the most part we simply do not know such things. Though sometimes there are clues. For instance, the fact that Lucy Hutchinson talks of Thomas May’s history “in as far as he hath carried it on” indicates that at that point she was certainly working in the 1640s. And in any case, her description of her husband’s balance of motivation at the beginning of the Civil War seems rather too precise to mean anything other than what it says. It is also of some interest that the Godly felt no compunction about making such statements. This in itself can be regarded as a degree of confirmation that they could indeed conceive of political matters that were a greater priority than even the defence of true religion. A comparison of the writings and careers of two figures representing each of the main localities of this study provides a good introduction to the character of Godly activity and its place in parliamentarian allegiance. We can look in conjunction at the views of Henry Ireton, who lived a few miles from Nottingham, and Walter Yonge, who lived a few miles from Exeter. Despite the geographical distance, there was much common ground between them. Both were trained as lawyers, and had strong opinions and an analytical turn of mind. Both were also radical parliamentarians, and each offers a commentary which is as good a guide as we possess to a particular phase of the dispute. In a sense indeed they provide a frame for the events. Yonge’s diaries are an invaluable description of the development of opposition opinion from 1605 to 1640, though his contribution to the cause during the war is less well known. Ireton came to prominence at the end of the affair. He was the political spokesperson for the New Model Army as the conflict reached its most critical juncture in 1647 and 1648. As such he has come to be seen as leading the revolution at this stage. And from that point of view he offers one of the most cogent, consistent and carefully formulated analyses of what the aims of the war had been. In terms of background, the two men were of similar social status. They were both of the lesser gentry, one or two ranks below the county elite. Yonge’s family, as already noted, had been successful merchants in Elizabethan times, and the purchase of a few small manorial holdings in

182


South East Devon had brought them to the fringes of the gentry. Ireton too was of the smaller gentry, a landowner of scarcely more substance than a yeoman. His inferior pedigree was condescendingly remarked by Lucy Hutchinson.11 She no doubt included him among the “middle sort” of people that she regarded as the basis of parliamentarian support in Nottinghamshire. Her sense of social classification was acute. And both Yonge and Ireton can fairly be regarded as belonging to that pivotal socio-economic category that she identified. Beyond all this, their most obviously discernible shared characteristic was their Godliness, and this, in revisionist (and even counter-revisionist) terms would be taken as the principal determinant of their adherence to the parliamentary cause. It will be suggested here, however, that a closer look at the careers and opinions of the two men indicates that a belief in the importance of parliament, and especially in the status of parliamentary law, was a more significant factor in their motivation. And this reflected a psychological trend that was also apparent in their religious life. We should not, and indeed could not, play down the manifest spiritual commitment of these men. But it is equally important not to ignore the fact that when we look at the most prominent features of their Godly activities, we find an attitude of mind that had an obvious political dimension. An earlier discussion of the Scottish Revolution introduced what was probably the most significant political effect of Calvinist theory – that is, the assimilation of the idea that the private citizen had a right to make independent public judgements.12 Both Yonge and Ireton came to illustrate this tendency very fully in the parliamentary arena. They also showed how the same kind of assumption could be a crucial part of religious practice. This in turn will lead us to suggest that the most important aspects of Godliness for these men were probably not those that historians now tend to emphasise. It is true that both of them were strong moral disciplinarians of the kind that recent studies have tended to regard as one of the defining features of Godliness in the early seventeenth-century context.13 Ireton was approved by Lucy Hutchinson as having been educated “in the strictest way of godliness, and being a very grave and solid person”.14 No doubt this helped to compensate for his lack of social status in her eyes. And Walter Yonge presented almost a caricature of the most uncompromisingly Puritan persona in this respect. He believed that mixed dancing and stage plays “tended to the high provocation of God’s wrath”.15 And he was happy to relate the cautionary tale of the stone which fell from the roof of Tiverton church and “dashed out the brains” of a man who was playing cards in the churchyard on the


Sabbath.16 Yonge also displayed another characteristic which is now favoured as a defining aspect of Godliness – the “fear of popery”. Right from the beginning in 1605, his diaries were constantly preoccupied by the supposed threat of Catholic conspiracy. During the 1620s these apprehensions came to include his distrust of the high ceremonialist or Laudian tendency in the English church. He found, for instance, that the work of Dr John Cosin “Containeth many points of popery and seven sacraments, which he termeth sacramentals.” And he noted that Dr Richard Montagu had been questioned in parliament “about a book containing many points of popery”.17 Following the work of Nicholas Tyacke,18 many historians have embraced the idea that the issue in the church was mainly theological, and particularly concerned an Arminian attack on the Calvinist theory of predestination. But the basic stated objection of both Yonge and Ireton to “Catholic” tendencies in the English church was not the supposed association with Arminian theology. Nor was it the universal threat of the Papal “anti-Christ”. In fact their dislike of “popery” focused quite specifically on a profound distaste for the revival, or survival, of sacramentalism. They regarded these rituals as remnants of a “bodily” or “outward” religion, and thus the reverse of what they believed the essential character of religious practice ought to be. Accordingly, they defined the positive side of Godliness as the opposite tendency – an emphasis on the power and importance of preaching: the hearing and comprehending of the Word of God. So we find that the most consistent and long-standing of all Yonge’s religious concerns recorded in his diaries is his disapproval of the establishment tendency to place constraints on independent preaching activity. As early as 1606 Yonge was deploring the official clampdown on unlicensed lecturers, which meant that: “No minister whatsoever may preach before he gets a new license from his ordinary of the diocese – albeit he has been a preacher these 20 years.”19 In 1614 Yonge was bemoaning the new instructions from the church establishment which aimed to prevent people gadding “to other preachers who had better gifts than their own pastors”. He was also dismayed that the instructions attempted to enforce the rule “that all shall kneel at the receiving of the sacraments”.20 In 1622, he noted bitterly the royal injunction that ministers should “preach but once a sabbath and only in their own cures”.21 He clearly found it difficult to disguise his critical view of policy on these matters. Parliament, however, was always more in tune with Yonge’s priorities. Thus, in 1624 he was able to note that the House of Commons had lodged a complaint against Dr Samuel Harsnett,

184


who had “silenced all preachers that preach in the forenoon and caused images to be set up in churches”.22 When he became an MP himself, Yonge recorded sermons at Westminster at the same time as his Civil War diaries.23 And when the royalists sequestered his house in Devon in 1644, they claimed to discover a “seditious lecturer”.24 Whether or not this charge was true in particular, it was certainly an accurate reflection of Yonge’s place in the balance of opinion in religious affairs. His view of the overwhelming importance of obtaining what he could regard as adequate preaching, and his rejection of any hint of sacramentalism, meant that effectively he was a non-conformist within the church. And the basis of his position was the assumption of an individual right to determine his own relationship to the scriptures. This then was the religious aspect of that crucial Calvinist assertion of the general right of personal judgement. Once embraced, it radically altered the balance of the relationship between people and power. And the potential political effects could scarcely have been more significant. It has already been suggested above that this kind of assumption was manifest most clearly in the self-confidence of MPs in the early Stuart parliaments. Walter Yonge was not an MP at that time, but his diaries show that he certainly shared the mood of the House in that respect. He took an opposition line across a whole series of issues, such as foreign policy, unparliamentary taxation and the government’s neglect of the field of legislation. Yonge was a very good example of what this kind of critical opinion could mean for political development. For as we shall see, when he did become an MP in the 1640s, all this was drawn together in commentaries which expressed a most positive belief in the authority of parliament. The balance of Henry Ireton’s religion was much the same. He came from a strongly non-conformist background. His parents were regularly brought before the Nottinghamshire church courts for the offences of sermon-gadding and not kneeling at communion, from 1609 onwards.25 In 1636 Ireton and his mother were jointly cited for refusing to come up to the rail and take communion kneeling.26 This local evidence is especially useful because it substantiates other more general sources, such as the Remonstrance which he is believed to have drafted to justify the political intervention of the Army in the autumn of 1648. This offered a precise description of the nature of Godly priorities as they related to the Civil War.27 But clear and powerful though it is, there is a danger of this statement being excluded from historical analysis. The usual tendency would be to seize on the supposed weaknesses of this kind of evidence – such as the fact that it cannot be taken as truly personal or spontaneous


in its form or making. And on this basis it might well be discounted or overlooked. But it has been an important feature of this study to argue for a more open and inclusive view – assuming the freedom to make coordinating and compensating connections across disparate categories and fields of evidence. The validity and advantages of such an approach are clearly shown in this example. These statements are not set aside, but are held and weighed in the balance. Then two rather different kinds of source can be used in conjunction as complementary. And this tells us that in fact the Remonstrance of 1648 articulated the basis of Ireton’s beliefs as actually practised before 1640. What the Godly desired, he said, was “freedom and enlargement to the Gospel; for the increasing and spreading of light amongst men”. He contrasted this with the tendency of the church establishment to lean in the other direction, that is towards sacramentalism, which he characterised as “those corrupted forms of an outside religion and church government by means whereof the generality of people held in darkness, superstition, and a blind reverence of persons and outward things, fit for popery and slavery”.28 The suggestion that sacramental ritual was appropriate for slavery was not just a vague generalisation. It highlighted an important psychological link between Ireton’s view of religion and his view of politics. In both cases, as we shall see, the issue was between “the blind reverence of persons”, and the free exercise of participatory rights. This political connection across the range of Ireton’s beliefs also underlines the force of other statements made in the Remonstrance, where he was happy to affirm that the Civil War conflict was characterised essentially by its political dimension. Although he recognised that Puritanism had become closely associated with the parliamentarian cause, he was quite clear (like the Hutchinsons) that it was not to be regarded as the principal motive behind the dispute. He described religion as one of the “many other more particular or special interests” that had occasionally entered the balance on either side.29 And he declared that the “chief subject of our contest” was political: “the sum of the public interest in common right and freedom”. We will return in due course to the question of precisely what Ireton meant by “common right and freedom”. In the present context the phrase “the sum of the public interest” is rather more significant. It indicates once again how the Godly could conceive of an overarching constitutional perspective. In this respect, the fact that Ireton was speaking for the army as well as for himself is quite instructive. It further consolidates the notion of a consensus about the priority of political aims.

186


There were others among Ireton’s associates and co-religionists who specifically echoed this view. Most famously there was Cromwell’s rather cryptic statement that religion was not the thing at first contended for.30 A more extended and informative analysis was given by another independent inclined New Model Army officer, John Maidstone, who said that “the quarrel at first commenced was grounded on a civil foundation; the king charging them with invading his prerogative, and the Houses charging him with the breach of their privileges, and the invassalling of the people represented by them”.31 This captures not only the sense of political priorities, but also the essential thrust of what lay behind it – parliament’s assertion of the authority derived from the principle of consent. Thus Ireton and his associates reflect a consensus about the primary importance of political aims. This is reinforced by his description of his religious ideals, which begins to suggest how the significant relationship between Godliness and the parliamentarian revolution lay in the development of participatory rights. It leads us to look more widely, and in greater detail at the character of Godly activity. The topic has to be set against a background of controversy. The nature and influence of “Puritanism” has long been a subject of debate. Among those referred to here as progressive historians, such as R.H. Tawney, Christopher Hill, William Haller and, as we have already seen, Michael Walzer, it was regarded as in various ways radical and forward-looking.32 In the overall context of the history of Protestantism one might say that the Godly were, by definition, a radical movement. They were a minority seeking to further extend the Reformation. This was the reason for their existence. But the radical interpretation did not fit easily with revisionist inclinations. So historians like Patrick Collinson have chosen to adopt a more restricted timeframe, and to focus on particular and often less central aspects of Godly activity – such as their commitment to magistracy and social order, and the “orthodoxy” of Calvinist predestinarian theology.33 Given these limits, Puritanism could be redefined as conservative and conventional. One problem that this raised for the revisionists was that they still needed the religious factor to stand as their principal cause of the Civil War. Once more, a “conservative” grouping had to be transformed into a revolutionary force. It fell mainly to Nicholas Tyacke to jam this part of the jigsaw into place, with the theory that the conservative Godly were provoked into uncharacteristically radical action in the late 1630s by the “innovatory” Arminian theology of the Laudian party. The idea


was very influential, notwithstanding the complication that few of the Laudians could actually be shown to favour Arminian theology. And although the principle of predestination was certainly asserted by the Godly in political polemic, it was never a prominent issue, or even a very clear conception on the ground. By exaggerating the significance of the theological divide, the revisionists reached the contradictory conclusion that although the Laudians’ aim was to impose strict conformity, they could nevertheless be seen as revolutionaries.34 It is an example of how the general balance or context of a subject can be subverted by a restrictive focus and a willingness to stretch the bounds of logic. We may also feel that it leaves us in need of a more rigorous definition of the term revolution. The present study takes a revolution to be a challenge to the structures of power, whereas the basic purpose of Laudianism was to reinforce established authority. Of course, the Godly might not have been true revolutionaries either. Even though they sought further reformation, it might not have been such as to undermine the power base in the church. But in fact, as we shall see, it did tend very much in that direction. That was why the Laudians stood against Puritanism, and the threat to hierarchical power they believed it to pose. The most consistent feature of modern views of Puritanism is the tendency to give it an essentially repressive and restrictive character – an obsession with moral discipline, social control and the assurance of Election.35 While not denying that these were common aspects of the Godly outlook, this study proposes that their relationship to parliamentarianism had a different and in some ways opposite force, which had much more to do with concepts of liberty – and a different kind of election. In this analysis the terms Godly and Puritan are used interchangeably, on the basis that they can be defined as the groups seeking a completed or pure reformation. This remained a radical position in itself. And it had further crucial, devolutionary implications. Their most determined opponents, such as the Laudians, are taken to be most appropriately described as the traditionalists, or “high ceremonialists” – in the useful characterisation suggested by David Cressy.36 A recent thesis on the development of Godliness or “The Gathering of the Elect” in seventeenth-century Nottinghamshire by Stuart Jennings has overall attempted to reinforce the notion of the Puritans as a conformist group provoked into defensive action in the late 1630s.37 It displays many contradictions. The title itself seems to reflect the current assumptions of historians rather than the force of evidence. For as Jennings accepts (and other information about Nottinghamshire confirms) theology was not the issue. The confrontation between predestinarianism and

188


Arminianism is really not apparent on the ground. Calvinist theology was ill suited to establishing itself at a pastoral and local level.38 Jennings suggests, quite rightly, that one thing that did visibly distinguish the Puritans was the strength of their commitment to preaching. But he then goes on to say, somewhat confusingly, that this emphasis was something that they shared with the majority of their protestant neighbours, and that it was this that created a “consensus in the Early Stuart church”.39 Taking this rather insecure proposition as his premise, he can then conclude that “the issue of preaching ought to be seen as independent from a concept of non-conformity though it was sometimes perceived as such by those in authority”.40 Indeed it was. The present study takes what is perhaps a more consistent position. The Puritan attitude to preaching clearly was nonconformist, if only because more than any other aspect of their activities it persistently brought them before the ecclesiastical courts for breaking the law of the church, throughout the period 1605–1640. The Godly were very particular about their preaching. They sought it to a degree and in a manner that regularly took them outside the standard legal provisions of the parish. Most importantly, they were asserting a right to judge and determine the quality of the service that they received. This ambition posed both a practical and a philosophical challenge to the authority of the church establishment. It is of some interest that the citations for lay non-conformity as shown in the Nottinghamshire church court records effectively begin in 1605. Modern historians have invested much energy in trying to rebut the idea that the accession of James I was the starting signal for the disputes between crown and parliament.41 As regards the church, they have asserted that James was a moderating influence. In some ways this is quite correct. He was a good Calvinist. He did not have the tendency of both his predecessor and his successor to flirt with aspects of worship that might be considered popish. He had a genuine sense of the prime importance of scripture, and a commitment to a more educated clergy. But he was also acutely aware of the threat to hierarchy posed by the radical Godly. He had written books to warn against the freedoms that they assumed. In “Basilikon Doron” in 1599, he identified the threat of “puritans, very pests in church and commonwealth making their own imaginations the square of their own conscience”. James understood that there was an ongoing political challenge in the Godly penchant for independent initiative. He recalled that in the circumstances of the Scottish Reformation they had begun to “fantasy themselves a democratic form of government”.42


James naturally wished to ensure that these tendencies were not encouraged in his new realm. So the canons that emerged following the Hampton Court Conference made no concession at all to Godly demands for an end to certain traditional vestments and ceremonies. And with the appointment of the Puritans’ arch enemy, Richard Bancroft, to Canterbury in December 1604, the order soon went out, with the king’s personal blessing, that any clergyman who refused to conform should be expelled. James’s apologists describe this drive for conformity as “a temporary aberration”.43 And it is pointed out that in any case only about 1 per cent of clergy refused to subscribe (including four in Nottinghamshire – in the northern parishes of Headon, Babworth, Bawtry and Worksop). But this was just the surface flurry of the disruption caused. A crucial but little remarked aspect of Bancroft’s assault was a review of preaching licences between 1604 and 1606. We have already seen from Walter Yonge’s reaction what effect this might have among Godly groups who did not really regard licences as the most important qualification for preaching. In fact it was the attack on the practice of independent preaching activity that produced the initial burst of citations for sermon-gadding and related activities in the Nottinghamshire Archdeaconry courts in 1605. There were 17 people from five different parishes cited – the largest number in any single year. The line of dispute had been firmly drawn. Jennings supposes that it was only the Laudian drive to demote the importance of preaching in the 1630s that constituted the establishment provocation. Yet his own figures plainly indicate the contrary. From 1605 to 1610 there were 40 citations for offences of sermon-gadding or unlicensed preaching. This was the same number as in the decade from 1630 to 1640.44 The other side of Godly activity as it appeared in citations before the church courts (and which Jennings does accept as non-conformist) was the avoidance of what Puritans regarded as survivals of “bodily” religion. Most often, and perhaps most significantly, it emerged as presentments for refusing to kneel at communion. This was the moment when the Godly felt themselves in greatest danger of being forced to submit to what Ireton called “the corrupt forms of an outside religion”. These offences too show no great change in incidence over the course of the period. There were 18 citations for not-kneeling between 1605 and 1617, and 14 between 1630 and 1642. The impression given by historians like Nicholas Tyacke and Andrew Foster that the offence of not-kneeling was a new kind of non-conformity incited by the pressure of Laudian policies in the later 1630s is really very misleading.45 And once again, most important of all were the psychological implications of the balance

190


of worship preferred by the Godly. They were asserting a form of religion that rejected conformity to physical ritual, and emphasised the independent activity of the mind, both in the insistence on and the evaluation of what they considered to be good preaching. Therein lay the real challenge to the church authorities. The Laudians were just one manifestation of the ceremonialist reaction that, as Claire Cross pointed out, began in earnest with Richard Bancroft, at the turn of the century.46 The intentions of the traditionalists remained consistent throughout the period – to reassert the importance of the sacraments as opposed to preaching, and resist the Puritan ambition to exalt the last and eliminate the other. Bancroft was in fact involved, at a distance, in a case in Nottingham at the turn of the century, which brought these issues to the fore. The John Darrell controversy is best known as a lively tale of witchcraft, possession and exorcism. Darrell was claiming to be able to contrive, through the power of fasting and prayer, the removal of devils from certain individuals in the Nottingham area. The idea was to demonstrate the superior force of Godly spirituality.47 But this was not really the crux of the issue for Darrell, or the church authorities. What brought the full force of the regime down upon him was the fact that he was using his triumphs as an exorcist as a means of establishing himself as a preacher in Nottingham. It was a novel method of acquiring such a post. But the power and appeal of self-sufficient preaching was a long-term problem for the northern church. It certainly troubled Edwin Sandys, who was Archbishop of York when Darrell was acquiring his reputation. Sandys had no quarrel with predestinarian theology, and he was broadly tolerant of the desire among the Godly to avoid certain prescribed ceremonies. But he was much troubled by a spate of unlicensed preaching. “New orators rising up from among us, foolish young men, who while they dispute of authority and admit of no superior are seeking to completely overthrow our ecclesiastical polity.”48 He noted specifically the danger that such men chose to remain as deacons, so that they would only be obliged to preach, and not to administer the sacraments. It was one of the many expedients to which Godly non-conformists resorted in order to create the scope to worship in the way they wished. Darrell certainly fell into the problem category. He began his career as an itinerant, unlicensed preacher, and ended it in the same state, having forfeited the license that he did receive. He never held a cure. What he was trying to achieve in Nottingham was to make himself the principal preacher at the town’s biggest church, St Mary’s, while


leaving the remainder of the ecclesiastical duties to the incumbent, John Aldridge. It was not too surprising that this agenda should have caught the attention of Richard Bancroft, Bishop of London, and his chaplain, Samuel Harsnett, who set out to discredit Darrell by every means, legal and literary. Like Sandys, Bancroft seems to have had no quarrel with predestinarian theology. He was not an anti-Calvinist, and was suspicious of several early Arminians. But again like Sandys, he was concerned about the dangers of independent preaching activity.49 Few preachers could have been more independent than Darrell, so Harsnett was detailed to undermine him. He suggested that Darrell’s reputation as an exorcist was being used by his supporters to establish the efficacy of the church of pastors and teachers over that of bishops.50 Quite so. Darrell’s friends confirmed that what had alerted the church authorities to this danger was “Darrell threatening judgements of God against all such pastors as allow their people to perish for lack of instruction.”51 This was the fate from which Darrell believed he had come to save the people of Nottingham. His supporters represented him as the first established preacher in that “populous town”.52 He himself spoke of “all those who by his ministry effected because of Somer’s dispossession. began to hear of the Gospel in Nottingham (where a settled preacher hath not been since her majesties reign). Nottingham (hereto not so forward) became (for a time) very zealous in hearing the word”.53 This was all rather uncomplimentary to the long-standing incumbent of St Mary’s, John Aldridge. The latter was in fact a Puritan-friendly minister in his own right. He was indeed at first content to accept Darrell’s assistance, both as exorcist and preacher, and was “a great companion of Mr Darrell’s”.54 But, at least according to Harsnett, he came to resent Darrell’s disparagement of the previous state of affairs at the church, “where I have been a preacher these twenty years, the people there being but as other congregations are, and as willing to hear the word of God preached as any other, in my opinion”.55 Harsnett was quite cleverly using Aldridge’s position to reassert the validity of the official preaching provision against those who thought they could do better by going private. But it highlighted the dispute about definitions. Godly non-conformists had their own idea of what constituted efficacious preaching, and most importantly, they assumed that they had the right to make that judgement. There was an important truth in Harsnett’s claim that Darrell “accounteth neither parson, nor vicar, nor any that such popish names, for preachers”.56 The crucial thing was that the Godly saw positive benefit

192


in preaching which had an independent status. They regarded it as a sign of authenticity for someone to be elucidating the scriptures by virtue of their individual inspiration rather than by the authority of the church. What must have struck most terror into people like Bancroft and Harsnett was to hear Darrell deny that he was endowed with any priestly powers. “As all who have heard me preach will know, I claim no more than any ordinary Christian.”57 This was the ultimate consequence of the Godly assertion of the right of independent judgement – any ordinary Christian could do it. In fact, the Darrell episode had an explicit, practical democratic dimension. Darrell was adopted by public acclamation. It is difficult to tell how far this went among the congregation, but it certainly went much too far for Harsnett, who was outraged by the whole idea. He noted that Darrell had been “chosen by some of the town to be their preacher”.58 “The doctor to be chosen by the parish, as Mr Darrell was, is the preacher, forsooth.”59 The principle of electing ministers and officials was an acknowledged part of Calvinist theory. It has tended to be obscured because Godly groups were so rarely in a position to formally put it into practice. But the genuine democratic tendencies in Puritan activity will rise to the surface again before we leave the Nottinghamshire arena. The Puritan project was a powerful intellectual force, and this was one reason why they were often able to retain the initiative at local level, and thus avoid the need to actually separate from the church. The ability of high ceremonialist groups to challenge this position depended largely on when and where they could focus enough concentrated fire on the problem. There was another good example of a traditionalist offensive in Nottingham a few years after the Darrell episode. In the mid1610s, a very vocal ceremonialist group in the area launched a campaign to smoke out an entrenched non-conformist element surrounding the “ancient alderman” and erstwhile MP for the town, Anker Jackson. The ceremonialist party itself included a recent mayor, and a clutch of local gentry with clerical connections. Their method of attack was quite inspired, but also underlined the difficulty of getting to grips with their rivals. “The Song of the Puritans of Nottingham” was set to the tune of “Bonny Nell”, and rendered round the town at night, accompanied by an improvised orchestra of candlesticks, tongs and basins. My muse arise and truth then tell, Of a pure sect that sprang from hell, Who are so vain and false and fickle They leave the church to conventicle.


The composers took full advantage of what was one of the safest forms of libel, and some of the verse was just bawdy – no doubt then, as now, a reliable means of capturing the public imagination. But the Song also offered a substantial critique of Puritan activity. These sectaries have no confession Nor could endure the old profession. By night they catechise each other The holy sister and the brother. And when the high priest hath well drunk Each one betakes him to his punk. Some handicrafts men by their trade New Gospellers by them be made. The cobbler and the tailor proud For conventicles are allowed. These mechanics are very nimble To leap beyond their lasts and thimble.60 The Song identified the principal trends that we have noted as the basis of Puritan worship – the avoidance of the old ceremonies, and the pursuit of freedom for the Gospel. If it also voiced some of the conservatives’ worst fears about the subversiveness of open access to the Bible, these phobias too were often well founded. For instance, a very definite feature of non-conformity in Nottinghamshire was the prominence, and often predominance, of women in the movement. The lyricist of the Song of the Puritans was one William Withington, a local gentleman apparently at the centre of the determined group of ceremonialists in and around Nottingham. He had an opportunity to amplify and substantiate his charges when Anker Jackson sued him for libel in the court of Star Chamber in 1617. Withington’s allegations were now more measured, but also more specific. He asserted that the Puritan group had held private meetings in Jackson’s home at night, and “have expounded places of scripture according to their own fancies”. He said that they had also gone out of the parish to “sermons and exercises of other sectaries of their humour and faction”. And they had been heard to assert that “the Lord’s Supper must be taken by persons standing or sitting, and not kneeling”.61 Once again, he had clearly identified the essential aspects and character of Puritan non-conformity. His charges were borne out in the church courts. Members of Anker Jackson’s family were already being cited in 1615, as they would be at regular intervals for this kind of non-conformist activity throughout the period. And

194


another of Withington’s particular targets, the draper William Hopkins, was before the court in 1618 for refusing to kneel at communion.62 The outcome of the case in Star Chamber is not known. But Withington did win an important victory of another sort. The high ceremonialist offensive must have made some impression, for they were shortly able to take up their tongs and basins once again to celebrate the winning back of the church of St Mary’s from the Puritan grasp. All ye who be precise And daily catechise Send up your mournful criesSt Mary’s we have lost. It was the end of the “real” preaching regime which had been inaugurated by John Darrell, and which had survived in some form for more than a decade, no doubt largely due to the activities of Richard Caldwell, another “zealous preacher” in Jackson’s group, who had attached himself to the ministry. During this time the great church had remained a focus for the Godly. As late as 1615, five people were cited before the church courts for leaving their own parish and gadding to the sermon at St Mary’s.63 But with the death of John Aldridge in 1616, the latitude and protection for Puritan worship came to an end. The high ceremonialist party were able to gather their social influence and exploit the process of presentation. The cure was taken on by Oliver Withington, under the patronage of William. In his previous employment, Oliver had confronted another non-conformist group at Gotham, just south of Nottingham.64 When Oliver died in 1617, he was replaced by Ralph Hansby, another staunch traditionalist associated with Withington’s group. Henceforth St Mary’s would be a parish for gadding from rather than to. It was a great setback for the Godly. The degree to which they had been able to set the agenda at St Mary’s must indeed have led them to hope that the reformation was capable of being continued and completed within the church. However, they did not despair, and they did not disperse. They sought a new focus, and they were fortunate enough, or sufficiently well organised, to find one almost immediately. In 1617, the powerful preacher George Coates, already associated with the Jackson clan, became minister at the smaller church of St Peters. His was a distinctly Puritan-friendly regime, and it survived through to the Civil War. He married Anker Jackson’s daughter Cicely. While another of Jackson’s daughters, Christiana Hall, residing in the nearby parish of


Adbolton, travelled regularly to St Peters to hear Coates preach. In 1625 the capacity of the church was enlarged with a gallery to accommodate the additional interest. It was in 1629 that the church establishment gathered itself to confront the problem again. This coincided with the return of Samuel Harsnett to the Nottinghamshire arena, this time as Archbishop of York. Harsnett’s campaign was aimed specifically at tightening up the rule that required people to worship in their own parishes. The purge had much the same effect as that instituted by Bancroft in 1605. It exposed an extensive network of sermon-gadding to ministries such as that of George Coates at St Peters. This was not just a matter of enforcing the laws of the church. To the traditionalist mind it was a state of chronic disorder to have substantial numbers of people from a variety of parishes deciding for themselves that their local preacher was inadequate, and seeking what they were pleased to regard as a better service elsewhere. Historians have sometimes sought to deflect the force of this with vague assertions that the government was also in the business of promoting good preaching, and that the bishops themselves were often active in this respect.65 This fails to recognise the scope and significance of the initiative that the Godly were assuming, and the degree to which the establishment felt the need to resist it, when they could. The position of Samuel Harsnett is a good case in point. Kenneth Fincham has drawn a distinction between Laudian and Jacobean attitudes to preaching, and placed Harsnett in the latter and supposedly more sympathetic camp.66 It is not clear how this ties in with the fact that the biggest single purge of Puritan preaching activity came in the early years of James’s reign, and that Harsnett was closely associated with the campaign. The answer is of course that to assume that the Jacobean regime took a Puritanfriendly view of preaching is really a distortion. Whether or not Harsnett did, as he claimed, preach regularly in his diocese is not the relevant measure. Harsnett’s true position in relation to Godly preaching practice is represented by his attack on Darrell, his assault (deplored by Walter Yonge) on urban lectureships and afternoon sermons in his Norwich diocese, and his crackdown on sermon-gadding when he returned to the Nottinghamshire arena. Men like Harsnett were as determined to control the scope of preaching activity as the Godly were to set it free. The assessment of preaching had become in every sense a very subjective issue. The Godly were not only prepared to break the rules to seek out their preferred quality, but also to express their disapproval when they were obliged to endure the type of preaching or service that they did not appreciate. There was a striking number of

196


cases where known non-conformists were charged with offences which seemed to involve deriding or barracking the minister. Ellen Denham of East Retford was ready to spread the Godly message far and wide. She was among a group who travelled to Sturton to hear the radical preacher John Robinson in 1605. Two years later she was travelling to Babworth, where she asserted the other side of Puritan religious preference. “She did disturb the minister in the execution of divine service, and did also impugn the rite and ceremony of the cross in the sacrament of baptism.”67 In 1613, John Simson, part of a persistent radical group in Mansfield, was presented for “irreverent behaviour in sermon time, talking and laughing and for carping and jibing at the sermon, and leaving before the end”.68 The following year, another known Puritan, a Mrs Pendock of Tollerton, was “abusing the minister in calling him dunce and ass in the churchyard”.69 In 1618, William Stockley of Clifton was presented for laughing in church. He was later to be associated with a group of sermon-gadders from that parish.70 Edward Taylor of Laxton seems not to have much frequented his parish church – an omission no doubt explained by the inadequacies he perceived on one occasion when he did appear, informing the minister, “you did quote the scriptures wrong”.71 The village of North Collingham contained one of the most radical and determined non-conformist elements in the county, in regular conflict with the church courts for sermon-gadding and not-kneeling offences from 1610, and actually classified as schismatic by the secular authorities in the 1620s. But even they seem to have just about hung on within the church, if only to express their dissatisfaction. In 1637, the central figure in the group, Samuel Shepherd, was cited for “his usual laughing, sneering and talking in sermon time on Sundays”.72 As was another leading member John Flood for “his frequent laughing and talking in service time”.73 Running them close for the title of the most intractable Puritan group in Nottinghamshire was that in the village of Kneesall – a name which perhaps came to sound somewhat ironic to the church authorities. The Godly of Kneesall were in fact very fortunate in being protected by Puritan-friendly ministries which kept them in the church, and even out of the church courts for much of the period. But the tenure of the staunch traditionalist William Clough from 1633 to 1638 brought a change of approach and a full-scale confrontation. Ordered to come up and receive communion kneeling openly at the rail, they demanded the license that they had been allowed in the past – to receive it in their pews.74 And when one of the radical group, Elizabeth Holmes, was baited by a neighbour as to “whether there was a sermon


or no at Kneesall church”, she replied, “no, but a company of shitten prayers. in a very contemptuous manner”.75 It is not surprising to find that on occasion ministers appeared somewhat cowed by these displays of intellectual self-assertion from their parishioners. John and Sarah Needham from the village of Staunton seem to have had this kind of effect. They were eminent Puritan figures, who for some time had been protected by an almost equally Puritan minister. In 1639, however, they were challenged by the arrival of a traditionalist, and began to gad to other parishes for sermons. They defended this by alleging that their minister was indistinct in delivery, and “if he knows he and his wife were coming, will not preach that day”.76 This gives us a hint as to what the Godly were actually seeking. In general terms their demand seems to have been for a kind of preaching that could convey a substantial and direct relationship with the Word. The distinction they were making appears most clearly in examples from two northern parishes in the early years of the period. In December 1607, five people from Bothamstall were cited for declaring, in the presence of the churchwardens and others, that “they will not come to the church where the minister is a reader and not a preacher”.77 They were not interested in passive repetition – they wanted the experience of lively, immediate scriptural analysis. At the same time, the same kind of tension was coming to the surface in the neighbouring village of Elksley. In 1605, the non-conformist minister Thomas Hancock left the parish and was replaced by Alex Smith. To an influential body of parishioners this was a backward step, and in May 1606 Smith himself was presented by the churchwardens for “reading of little printed books of sermons”.78 The courts did not follow through on the citation. But neither did the Godly of Elksley give up their quest for what they could consider good preaching. In 1607, the radical Puritan Brian Barton was found to be preaching in the parish without a license, and in October of that year the Archdeaconry visitation obliged the churchwardens to present themselves for allowing this to occur.79 Five years later they had still not reconciled themselves to a “dumb” minister. In October 1612, an Elksley parishioner was before the court for “abusing the minister and calling him fool”.80 But by the same token, the Godly were insistent on the importance of empowering the individual to read the bible. And again, this often took them outside the standard provisions of the parish. It was frequently women who were cited before the church courts for unauthorised teaching activities. Essentially, they were assisting other women

198


to attain the levels of literacy required for accessing and comprehending the Word. Thus in 1609, Anne Hatchet of Grove was cited for teaching in church. She admitted “that she in her own stall did teach divers maids of the same parish the catechism”.81 It was another such Godly enabler who articulated the vital purpose of these exercises. In 1624, Grace Coates, of the radical Puritan family from Basford, was cited for teaching without a license. “And she sayeth that all that cannot read are damned.”82 In one sense this seemed a somewhat discouraging assessment, but in another it gives a more active and enlightened character to the process of salvation as perceived by the Godly. A particularly appealing picture of that process is conjured up by one of the provisions of the will of David Justis, a non-conformist from Clareborough, again in the northern sector of the county. When cited before the church courts as a “negligent comer to church”, he claimed that he did attend his parish church once a month, but also went to others that were equally local. This was a case of sermon gadding, for he was within easy range of a series of Puritan-friendly ministries, which Clareborough could not boast at that time. There was undoubtedly Godliness in the family. In his will, he bequeathed to his daughter Elizabeth, “one bible, one table and one stool”.83 It appears that the traditional idea that exposition of the Bible was the prerogative of the male head of the household no longer prevailed in Godly circles. The image of Elizabeth Justis with her complete, personal bible reading kit seems to capture the essence of scriptural analysis as an independent intellectual exercise, open to every individual. The most extended manifestation of intellectualism among Godly women is in the pages of Lucy Hutchinson – not only in the fact of their being written, but also in the passages where she describes her own intellectual self-awareness. In one way her book conforms to standard paternalist assumptions in that it revolves around her husband John, who is in every sense the governor. This makes it all the more striking that in another sense she clearly perceives and shows herself to be his intellectual equal. Indeed, she was pleased to feel that this was what attracted him to her. She believed that even before he had met or seen her, he had been impressed by hearing and reading her literary work. She was thus confident that “he loved her soul and her honour more than her outside he loved her in the Lord as his fellow creature – not his idol”.84 That crucial distinction between intellectual and bodily activity could be applied across the board: to politics as we have seen, and to personal relationships.


It was in the field of scriptural analysis that Lucy could be most clearly seen engaging with her husband on a basis of equality. In one instance, a group of the citizens of Nottingham had obliged John to arrest some of the garrison’s cannoneers for meeting as “sectaries” in conventicles. In their chamber, Lucy discovered papers questioning the validity of the practice of child baptism. She did not dismiss these opinions out of hand. And she did not seek the judgement of a minister, or that of her husband. She dealt with the matter like “any private Christian” – as Darrell would have put it. Lucy applied herself to the Bible. And having seen what the scriptures had to say on the subject, she concluded that in fact the cannoneers were right. She then “commended her doubts” to her husband, and the two of them were on course to becoming Baptists. The episode illustrates precisely why the authorities were not happy to contemplate an exclusive and unsupervised relationship between the individual and the Bible. It has been suggested above that the question of theology did not define the essence of what was at issue between the Godly and the church authorities. Calvinist predestinarianism was a powerful force, but it is possible to interpret it in ways that are compatible with the alternative view of non-conformist priorities as outlined in this chapter. Probably the most influential study of seventeenth-century Calvinism in this respect is that of R.T. Kendall, stressing the importance that the Godly placed on the assurance of election to salvation.85 The idea of predestination was, theoretically, at the opposite pole to the Catholic concept of salvation through works, and some historians have seemed happy to suppose that the process therefore involved little more than a passive belief on the part of the Godly.86 In truth, however, Kendall suggested a much more active process. The sense of election was neither automatic nor fixed – it had to be established and maintained. And the method by which this was achieved was far from passive. Kendall quotes Arthur Hildersham, the radical Puritan minister most closely associated with Darrell and the Ireton family. He said that the Saint had to “prove by the Word, that Christ died for him”. This was a heavy obligation, involving a great deal of effort and initiative. It was necessary to demonstrate “a willingness to obey God in all his commands”. And this was why the most vital requirement for the Godly was a detailed and lively knowledge of the Bible. Assurance was based, again in Hildersham’s words, on “the assent and credit that the mind giveth to the Gospel”. It was Hildersham’s associate William Bradshaw (Kendall tells us) who most clearly stated what this implied – sanctification was, in a sense, a

200


means to salvation. And the mechanism, said Bradshaw, was “nothing else but the ministry of the Gospel”.87 There are confirming indications from among the Godly laity of Nottinghamshire that they did not regard the process of salvation as passive, or necessarily exclusive. Gervase Piggot, from Thrumpton, just south of Nottingham, was from a family with a history of evading “bodily” ceremonies. He left one of the few explicitly “elect” wills in the record. It was, he said, “the sole aim”. This was not a passive assumption. He had a very clear concept of a means to that end – “The first thing to be sought. the primum quarendum of the Gospel.” And to ensure that this facility was available on a wider and more permanent basis, he left £20 a year for the maintenance of a learned, Godly divine to “preach the Gospel to the inhabitants of Thrumpton. and instruct them in the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ”.88 Gervase Lomax was a kinsman and neighbour of Piggot. He is not known to have appeared before the courts as a non-conformist, but his will displays a Godliness of a very similar character. He urged his children to “know the God of your fathers and to serve him with a perfect heart and willing mind. and to approve yourselves true members of his mystical body by your faithful, holy humble and temperate life and conversation”.89 Like Piggot he did what he could to extend the facility of scriptural knowledge to others. He left a pocket Bible to each of three friends. This interactive relationship with the Bible is most fully reflected in the pocket book of John Hooper. He was steward at the Nottingham residence of the Earl of Clare, and during the Civil War he became chief engineer to the parliamentary garrison. His pocket book has survived for the year 1645. To the modern eye it presents a rather odd mixture. There is a running account of the money he spent in the course of his work, and a selection of texts, presumably extracted from the Bible at moments of leisure and reflection. Various themes emerge from the quotations. There are notes on predestination. But once again, the concept is not a simple assumption. “For those whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son.”90 In another section he has a series of quotations to the effect that Jesus was “delivered up for us all”.91 He placed much emphasis on the power of “prophecy”. “He that hath the gift of prophecy doth understand all mysteries and all knowledge” and “speaks to men to their edification”. The gift was not exclusive. “The manifestation of the Spirit is given to everyman to profit withal.”92 To Hooper, the process of salvation was open, active, and in an important sense, democratic.


Christopher Hill identified this thirst for the saving knowledge of the Bible as the central issue. He cited Stephen Marshall’s view that preaching was “the chariot upon which salvation comes riding”. Hill also noted the implication that the Godly might come to regard preaching as the only necessity for salvation, and this would inevitably bring them into conflict with the authorities.93 The Godly were indeed promoting a concept of religion that relied almost exclusively on the comprehending of the Word. And it could therefore come to hinge on the intellectual initiative of the individual, rather than the authority of the church. Claire Cross has produced a judicious overview of the balance of power and influence in the church in this period. It illustrates the benefits of looking at the matter in the full context of the development of Protestantism in England. She notes the essentially anti-hierarchical thrust of Godly practice, and the areas of latitude that encouraged the Godly laity to hope that the reformation could be completed within the church. She identifies the desire of ceremonialists to reinstate the importance of the sacraments and counter the Puritans’ exclusive emphasis on preaching. She recognises that this reaction began with Bancroft, and continued with Bishops Neile, Overall, Andrews, Buckeridge and Harsnett, before it reached a peak of political power through William Laud. She sees that Laud’s defining aim was to enforce the existing rules of the church and restore the authority of the clergy to something like it had been before the reformation.94 Laud preferred the more traditional and ceremonial patterns of worship, where salvation was channelled through the person of the priest. He thus believed that “the altar is the greatest place of God’s residence on earth: for there ‘tis this is my body: but in the other, it is at most, this is my word”.95 Here was the crux of the matter. Laud sought to reinforce the outward and hierarchical forms of worship that the Godly were specifically trying to supplant. What Laudianism did in the 1630s was to attempt to close off the principal avenues of Puritan initiative. And the most effective method, as is well known, was to issue an instruction concerning the placing of the communion table. The Elizabethan church settlement had made little concession to the Godly distaste for the bodily implications of the communion service. The Edwardian provision that it was to be regarded as merely a commemorative act was discarded to allow leeway for those who still wished to interpret it in terms of the adoration of the host. But there was one important pragmatic compromise which favoured the strict Protestant point of view – it was to be left to individual congregations to decide whether the table was to be placed altar-wise against the east wall, or

202


sited in the centre of the church. The latter arrangement had distinct advantages for the Puritan element. It greatly diminished the sacrificial character of the service, and with a sympathetic minister prepared to bring communion to the pew, it even became possible to evade that connotation altogether. It was for precisely this reason that the Laudians engineered a decision at St Paul’s in 1633 to allow the position of the table to be determined by the episcopal authorities. The plan was that it should now be placed altar-wise, and railed off against the east wall, in every church in the kingdom. This was scarcely an innovation in any real sense of the word. It was simply the ending of a rather untidy fudge which had provided scope and cover for the independent concepts of Puritan worship. The Laudians sought to ensure that the rules regarding the communion service were obeyed, and thus to reassert a situation where order and ceremony marked the unquestionable character of church practice. As R.A. Marchant said, their desire to return the church interior to what it had anciently been was sign and symbol of the “innate conservatism” of their approach.96 Ironically, the revisionist determination to rebrand them as revolutionaries tends to conceal the genuinely attractive aspects of the Laudian campaign. Even a libertarian and agnostic view might feel that it was no bad thing to restore the “beauty of holiness” to churches in which a good deal of disorder must often have prevailed. To this extent, Laudianism had a truly constructive dimension. Harmony of form, sound and movement was intended to reflect harmony with God, and harmony within the community. And of course it was intended to repel the subversive force of Puritanism. In this respect, another phase of Laudian restoration work is particularly interesting. It troubled them to find that many pews had been raised “un-uniformly” or “indecently” above the general height. They demanded that these be reduced. This was partly for the sake of aesthetic order, and so that everyone could see the “altar” clearly. Beyond that, its significance is often interpreted rather tamely in terms of the affront to the social pretensions of parishioners for whom elaborate pews were an expression of status.97 Much more importantly, it was an attack on the last redoubt of non-conformity. Behind the cover of raised pews, many of the Godly had for some while managed to avoid kneeling at communion. There is one particular citation which indicates precisely these implications. In 1638, the church of Gringley-on-the-Hill was presented because,


Some seats in the church are all topped with fir boards higher than they anciently were, by which means it cannot appear whether the people sit or kneel at time of divine service. The ancient fabric is sawn off to affix the higher work unto, to make the same indecent for church seats for public prayer, because the same are too private.98 Also in 1638, Alex Sampson, a known non-conformist from South Leverton, was presented “for that he hath made a seat in our church not uniform – higher than any other that is near – hideth the sight of the desk or altar from all those that sit behind it”.99 It no doubt also served to hide Alex Sampson himself. A similar kind of tension was apparent in the biggest set-piece confrontation at St Peters, Nottingham. It was always the most likely venue for a showdown. St Peters was the Puritan-friendly church in the biggest centre of population in the county, and it was the handiest target for the Laudians. But in fact, it took the episcopal authorities several years and several visits to enforce the provision of a rail, with the table placed inside it. They left George Coates with instructions to administer to none who refused to come up to the rail. Even then the battle was not over. In 1638, at Easter, 43 of the congregation, including the mayor, declined to leave their pews to take communion. When cited before the church court, a few defended their stand on the basis of their scruples, because they “thought there was something more than indifference put to it”. Others declared that they had been ready to receive communion in their pews, as they expected. Although some simply pleaded practical inconveniences, there can be little doubt that the group overall represented the militant Godly of Nottingham – those who were prepared to put their heads above the parapet, rather than kneel at the rail.100 This was the most substantial single manifestation of a Godly or Puritan practice in which worship had come to be based on a process of intellectual assent rather than conformity to physical ritual. So it is important to recognise that what the Laudians were targeting were essentially concepts of latitude and liberty, which had provided the context for Puritan independent-mindedness for several decades. The Laudians were not innovators provoking new kinds of nonconformity, or breaching a Calvinist consensus. They were, on the contrary, quintessentially conservative. They aimed to reinforce the place of priestly ritual, and to resist the further development of a reformation which tended in the opposite direction. They were, pre-eminently, the defenders of ceremony and hierarchy in the church. They opposed the Puritan balance of worship for essentially the same reason that

204


Samuel Harsnett had opposed John Darrell at the turn of the century – because he sought to elevate the importance of autonomous preaching activities above that of the established church authorities. The Laudians wished to obstruct the assumption of intellectual initiative in religious practice. And this provides the clue to the real balance of forces in 1640. This study suggests that the efficient working link between Puritanism and parliamentarianism was the shared ambition for the application of participatory rights. By the same token, it is no great surprise to find that William Laud was one of the most powerful voices dissuading the king from referring himself to parliament. As Claire Cross has said, the Laudians came to royal favour by offering the king “a concept of order”.101 There is little doubt that Laud regarded the assertiveness of parliament as an even greater threat to the discretionary power of the crown than the independent-minded Godly were to the authority of the priesthood. On the other side of the coin, the developing psychology of the right of consent produced its own combinations. Just as it gave the Godly a natural inclination towards parliamentarian politics, so it gave their less hotly Protestant neighbours a degree of sympathy with the conscientious freedoms that they were seeking. There were certainly many who could not be classed as Puritans, but who nevertheless disliked the high-handed rigidity of the Laudian approach. In consequence, a kind of latitudinarian consensus could emerge among the laity. In general terms this produced the erastian tendencies of the Long Parliament, and the “tolerationist views” of radical parliamentarians.102 Later chapters will provide a particular example in the common stand against coercion in church affairs taken by the moderate Episcopalian William Pierrepont and the Puritan Independent Henry Ireton. The writings of Lucy Hutchinson neatly sum up the overall effect of this mood. Although the “middle sort” that she identified were not usually of the gentry, she credited them with a special degree of independence. They were “the able substantial freeholders, and the other commons, who had not their dependence upon the malignant nobility and gentry”.103 In a less frequently quoted comment, she describes exactly what this implied for the typical parliamentarian mind-set. On occasion it seems, the Nottinghamshire cavalry proved reluctant to follow orders. This, she thought, was not “out of cowardice, for the men were stout and cheerful in the service, but only had the fault of all the parliament party, that they were not very obedient to commands, except they knew and approved of their employment”.104 This insistence on


the right to consent may sometimes have proved an obstacle to military discipline, but it also constituted the fundamental strength and the philosophical basis of parliamentarianism. For a final illustration of how the principles of Godliness connected into this, we can return to the great church of St Mary’s. When the arrangements for the choosing of ministers settled down during the 1640s and 1650s, there was little to prevent Puritan practices rising to the surface. People of a certain age must have thought that they were seeing the ghost of John Darrell walk abroad. The engraved list of incumbents in St Mary’s tells the story clearly enough. Beside the name of each minister through the centuries is the name of the great noble or gentleman on whose patronage he depended. The exception is the period of the Interregnum, when in place of the name of the patron is the legend “appointed by the joint suffrage of the congregation”.

8 Statute Law and Civil War: “A Right That Induced Men to Fight”

The sovereignty of parliamentary law. The “unlimited power” that derived from elective consent. The right not to be concluded but by the representative. The rationale of Nottinghamshire’s leading parliamentarians – “Wise William” Pierrepont, and “the steersman himself” Henry Ireton. Thus religion can be added to the areas of public consciousness where the growing authority of the principle of consent was the most notable feature. It reflected the demand for representative rights and regulation in the economic and political spheres. It confirmed the force of the psychological trend that underpinned the desire to give the representative assembly a permanent place in the processes of government, and would sustain parliament’s ability to confront the crown. How did this appear in the coming of Civil War? In February 1641, MPs had achieved the passage of the Triennial Act and thus, so they thought, secured the “indemnity of the commonwealth” by means of guaranteeing regular assemblies and assuming a general supervisory influence over the conduct of ministers. With the subsidy, they had also satisfied the most urgent needs of government. This seemed to be a possible basis for a new and more workable balance of power. The passage of the Triennial Act did in fact momentarily improve the political atmosphere, and led to a “cycle of mutual exchange of favours”.1 On the same day that the measure was passed, the Commons initiated action on another crucial aspect of the revolution – they set up a committee to look into the question of the Court of Wards. They were no doubt hoping to negotiate its abolition, something not at all beyond the bounds of possibility. And this, together with the new level of certainty 206

Statute Law and Civil War: “A Right That Induced Men to Fight”

207

for representative taxation, would have established the rights of property along the lines fondly envisaged by the parliamentary gentry. They would thus have met what can be regarded as the other defining purpose of the parliamentarian project. But further progress of that sort was to be hampered by the considerable causes of disagreement that remained outstanding between king and Commons, and indeed among MPs themselves Even the compromises already reached were far from secure. It must be remembered that the new balance established by the Triennial Act was nothing like as acceptable to the king as it was to the Commons. It would be surprising if Charles did not seek ways of repelling the attack on his discretionary powers, just as he had done in the past. In the winter of 1640–1641 he was not in a position to offer any real resistance – he had no money, and no political support to speak of. But this soon began to change, and a common and useful way of analysing the situation is to ask how did the king gain a party. One factor was that the parliamentary leaders and their allies now failed to avoid the second unconstitutional “rock” that had been identified by Charles. The attack on the bishops not only continued but gathered momentum. With the political tide running in their favour, the Godly were pressing home their advantage. And in reaction, the defence of episcopacy became an important element in Royalist sentiment. The situation is complicated by the fact that they were objecting in part to the methods employed by the opposition – that is to say, the increasing pressure of “the people” in religious and political affairs. The attitude of Lord Digby is a good guide in this respect. Just a few weeks after his powerful advocacy of the Triennial Act, he spoke with equal force against the London Petition for Root and Branch abolition of the bishops. He asked – “what can there be of greater presumption than for petitioners, not only to prescribe to a Parliament what and how it shall do – but for a multitude to teach a Parliament what, and what is not the government according to God’s word”.2 This seems to illustrate both sides of Digby’s position – his belief in the authority of parliament, but also his abhorrence of the people taking matters into their own hands. This kind of tension was perhaps the single most important determinant of Civil War allegiance. With the Triennial Act, the representative principle had been placed at the heart of political life, to general approval. But as we saw above,3 there were future Royalists who, like Digby, welcomed this guarantee of orderly representation, but deplored the spread of direct popular pressure. The growing audacity of the people tended to underline the radical thrust of the course on which

208


parliament had embarked, and could induce some MPs to reconsider their position. Thus, at the risk of oversimplification, it can be said that a real conservative party began to gather around the king for the purpose of defending the principles of social and ecclesiastical hierarchy, which suddenly appeared to be under threat. On the other hand, it now became clear that the more radical and generally dominant group among the parliamentary leaders were not really happy to trust Charles at all. They remained significantly less frightened of the people than they were of the king. In fact, they were prepared to use popular pressure in the furtherance of their current objectives, and were not unduly troubled by this further extension of representative rights with ordinary people taking matters into their own hands. Norah Carlin has provided the best explanation of this side of the equation. The rise of the “middling sort” in both the socio-economic and the local-political spheres gave the ruling class the option of looking to “the people”, rather than to the king, for justification of their own power and position.4 Charles himself spent most of the summer of 1641 in Scotland, and naturally became the focus of rumours of plots supposedly aimed at retrieving his position and discomforting parliament. It is an interesting question whether the principal orchestrator of parliamentary propaganda, John Pym, harboured objections to the king that were already pretty much insuperable.5 Conversely, Royalist sentiment was also consolidating, and by the autumn, the lines of division had hardened probably beyond recall. The sign and symbol was the Grand Remonstrance of November 1641. Digby had previously suggested a remonstrance addressed to the king, in the traditional fashion. But Pym now had something rather different in mind. The text indicated that the parliamentary leaders had effectively given up on the king, and preferred to deal direct with the kingdom at large. It offered an extended indictment of the whole course of royal government since 1625. Though not always recognised as such, this Remonstrance, a detailed analysis of every conceivable aspect of policy, was the articulation of a self-defining public interest – that is, an overall view of the common good that was identified not through the person of the king but through the representative body of the Commons. And their essential means of securing this process, as Pym confirmed, was the provision of guaranteed parliaments – “a perpetual spring of remedies for the future”.6 It was at this same time, logically enough, that the parliamentary leaders began to express a stronger desire to influence the king’s actual choice


209

of ministers. In the wake of the Irish Rebellion and the attempted arrest of the 5 Members, this became especially urgent in respect of the militia. And it was now that Nottinghamshire’s most eminent parliamentarian, William Pierrepont, came to the fore in the House of Commons. Pierrepont made an invaluable contribution to the parliamentary cause as a politician. In fact, he gained a particular reputation for statesmanship in the tangled affairs of the time, which earned him the sobriquet of “Wise William”. In terms of this study, his career provides a convenient and coherent summary of many of the themes set out in the previous chapters, as they related to the course of events. And an analysis of his opinions and beliefs helps to compensate for the relative lack of local documentary sources which might otherwise leave the impression that the Midland county did not share the West Country interest in the legislative function. We have already seen, of course, the clear but isolated references indicating that Nottinghamshire did echo the West Country demand for parliamentary consent to taxation and more frequent opportunities for parliament to perform its other services. But from Pierrepont, and from Henry Ireton, we get explicit statements showing how fully the political class in the county had embraced the significance of representative legislation. An assessment of Pierrepont bears on the methodological question in other ways too. The surviving evidence of his life does not really admit of a study with the kind of weighty appearance of empirical form that historians like to convey. This may go some way to explain why he has received little specific attention, though he was undoubtedly one of the most influential politicians of the Civil War and Interregnum period. The lack of a substantial picture has not, however, prevented revisionists from seizing on some of the facts that are known about Pierrepont in order to incorporate him into their favoured preconception of the period. What is usually noted about him is that he was a prominent landowner, a leading member of the settlement-inclined “middle group” in parliament, and a firm opponent of the army’s purge of the Houses in 1648. On this basis he could be taken to represent what the revisionists have characterised as the basic “conservatism” of the Long Parliament.7 We might be forgiven for finding this a somewhat jarring and inadequate description of an assembly during the course of which the monarchy was first relegated in the constitution, then defeated in war, and finally destroyed. In truth, the interpretation rests on a highly selective focus. When we look in full at what is actually known about William Pierrepont, a significantly different outline emerges. To observe that Pierrepont and the Long Parliament

210


were conservative when it came to the ultimate drift towards social levelling, army rule and the execution of the king does not mean that they were on the conservative side in the overall political spectrum. To assume this is to fail to address the general balance of the evidence, and is one kind of partiality which we can perhaps seek to avoid. Pierrepont then personifies the character of the revolution as described in the foregoing pages. Previous chapters have suggested that the movement was originally and essentially secular. In this respect we can note that Pierrepont was not a radical Puritan non-conformist. So even more than with Yonge and Ireton, it is clear that his motives were indeed predominantly political. It is a fortunate irony that whatever the shortage of “in-depth” evidence, it is easier with Pierrepont than with most people to trace the consistent threads of his political objectives. Right from the beginning of the Long Parliament he was at the forefront of the drive to establish regular, guaranteed assemblies and an effective degree of parliamentary influence over government appointments, and he left a particularly clear statement of the practical and intellectual basis of that position. In fact, as we will also find with Yonge and Ireton, Pierrepont illustrates the phases or stages of the transition that was taking place in political psychology. He shows that it was not necessary to be an outright republican to offer a real challenge to the position and nature of the monarchy. There are many levels to which the power of a monarchy may be limited (it is reduced to almost nothing in Britain today) without being actually destroyed. We may certainly suppose that Pierrepont was a social conservative, and that he would have preferred to retain a monarchy of some kind. Nevertheless, right from the beginning in 1640, he sought a real change in the balance of power between king and parliament. Pierrepont came from a very ancient gentry family in Nottinghamshire. They claimed descent from one of the Conqueror’s generals, though from that auspicious beginning their rise was not particularly fast. It was not until the seventeenth century that they reached the apex of the social hierarchy. Pierrepont’s father, Robert, was one of the wealthiest men in England, but not ennobled until 1628, when he literally bought his way to the earldom of Kingston. He has been noted as one of the few members of his class who owed his advancement primarily to skilful economic management.8 Pierrepont inherited his father’s aptitude for business, though socially of course he was somewhat removed from the “middling sort”. Even as a younger son he counted as a great landowner in his own right, residing usually at the


211

Thoresby estate in Sherwood settled on him by his father in 1633: “with one of the most beautiful parks in the Kingdom, an inseparable part of the old forest”.9 He also inherited lands in Lincolnshire and in Huntingdonshire through his mother. The records of his estate management are very incomplete, but it seems that during the course of his life he had an interest in something like 40 manors, in as many as five counties. It seems that he drew much of his income from the sale of timber (the rights to which he always reserved), as well as from agricultural rents.10 On this basis he was able to maintain an aristocratic lifestyle. In London in February 1648, he was noted as spending £1000 in three weeks, with a coach and a large retinue, though the same observer drew a contrast between his conspicuous expenditure and his personal modesty.11 The family had influence far beyond their home county. They have been described as an example of a “national parliamentary” family,12 though it was only with Pierrepont himself that they really took on that role in terms of active politics. His marriage to Elizabeth, co-heiress of Sir Thomas Harris of Tong Castle, gave him a direct interest in county affairs in Shropshire. His first notable political activity came when, in 1637, he was made sheriff there. The office was not always a welcome honour, especially at a time of rising tension over Ship Money. It has been suggested that he was appointed to conciliate opposition to the government in view of these difficulties,13 though it is not quite clear what this implies. The previous sheriff was apparently unpopular, and Pierrepont may already have shown country sympathies in respect of the tax. But in general, the government got better results with hard-line sheriffs, and indeed it has been pointed out that Charles, rather unwisely, tended to exclude dissident groups from local office.14 In any case, Pierrepont had limited success in reconciling people to the payment. He did his best to ease the situation by attempting to adjust or “equalise” the assessments in response to complaints. But during 1638 he had several times to apologise to the Privy Council for the delay in collecting Shropshire’s quota, and he quickly concluded that the objection to the tax was rather more fundamental than a simple matter of apportionment: “Many complain of unequal assessing, but most do it only to delay. Very many refuse to pay.”15 Shropshire was perhaps a little ahead of the game in this respect, for in general terms it seems not to have been until 1639 that refusal became widespread; though, as Derek Hirst has pointed out, the relatively high yield of 1637–1638 was obtained only by intense and unrepeatable government pressure.16 Overall, the situation in Shropshire serves as a useful warning of the fallacy of supposing that payment indicated

212


contentment. It adds to the evidence of cases where “people concealed principled disagreement behind outward compliance”.17 And it underlines the force of the suggestion that rating disputes were often a kind of camouflage.18 Pierrepont was elected for Shropshire for the Short Parliament in March 1640, after a “close contest”. The episode is rather obscure, but there are again hints of political tensions in the air. He was originally to stand in an agreed pairing with the future Royalist Vincent Corbet. But they had already “broken” before the election, and Pierrepont seems eventually to have emerged from a contest with three members of the Corbet family.19 He failed to hold his county seat at the election for the Long Parliament in October 1640, but sat for Much Wenlock instead. He must have retained the respect of the country, for it was Pierrepont who presented Shropshire’s petition of grievances to the Commons.20 Lucy Hutchinson noted that although he did not sit for Nottinghamshire, the reputation he acquired for wisdom and eloquence in national politics made him “an ornament” to his home county.21 He is listed among the dozen leading MPs who “made the motions, spoke to the issues, and developed reports”.22 He was soon prominent in articulating the general opposition to the policies of the 1630s, and he put most of his energy into the attack on Ship Money, the unpopularity of which he knew only too well. In the debate on 8 December 1640, he denounced Sir John Finch, the judge whose assertion that parliament had no power in the matter had done more than anything to incense opinion. Pierrepont recalled that Finch had been reported as saying “that a hundred acts of parliament could not take it away”.23 It was as a gloss on the judgement in the test case brought by John Hampden in 1637 that Finch had asserted that “no acts of parliament make any difference” to the king’s right of discretionary taxation in an emergency.24 This warning shot may seem somewhat gratuitous, since parliamentary legislation was not the immediate issue, or an immediate prospect. In truth, the outburst revealed Finch’s awareness of the continuing, underlying threat that the developing public estimation of the representative principle posed to the free exercise of “patent”, even in the absence of parliaments. This was further exposed by Judge Berkeley’s supporting gloss that “Rex is Lex a living, a speaking, an acting law.”25 This was the reserve position that James I had sought to uphold,26 but it was precisely what the parliamentary classes had ceased to believe. As Pierrepont was about to demonstrate, the philosophical impetus behind parliamentarianism came from the conviction that the only sovereign law was statute law.


213

Pierrepont believed that parliament could certainly make the tax illegal, and would need only one act to do it. He also believed that they could bring to book those who had denied this power. He began to play an active part in the management of business. On 18 December 1640 it was Pierrepont who informed the House that the charges against Finch would be ready the next day.27 He went on to chair the committee for the impeachment of Sir Robert Berkeley. Pierrepont’s major speech against Ship Money on 6 July 1641 was recorded, and provides an invaluable and clear-cut illustration of his political beliefs. He began by berating Berkeley as a conspicuous example of the evil counsellors who were, as ever, attracting most of the ostensible blame for the king’s policies: “his is the sin who is to judge by the laws, who knows the laws are to the contrary, yet puts such thoughts in his prince”.28 But although Pierrepont was pleased to assume that Ship Money was against the law, this was technically rather doubtful. Not only had the judges in 1637 declared it lawful, they had done so on the traditionally well-accepted principle that the king had the sole right to determine what was an emergency. The trouble was that this was something else that the parliamentary classes no longer really acknowledged. The issue was constitutional and political rather than legal. And this soon became apparent from Pierrepont’s own speech. The clue came in his emotive description of “those writs, those monsters of necessity to provide ships to prevent imminent danger, that could not stay forty days for a parliament”.29 In other words, the real complaint against Ship Money was that it denied a role for parliament. What had usually been a specific levy on maritime counties had been extended, reasonably enough, to the whole country. But it now appeared as a general tax, without representative consent. This contradicted, and indeed reversed, the principle that the parliamentary classes had been seeking to apply across the whole range of public finance. Pierrepont said that the “countryman followeth the plough” in the assurance that his goods could not be taken away from him without his consent: “He knows the usual payments by law, and in extraordinary causes has that care to choose such for his Knights of the Shire and Burgesses, as might be mindful of the cause of payment and his estate.”30 This was the crux of the issue. To the king, Ship Money had become a useful means of raising a substantial and regular tax without having to resort to parliament. He could thus avoid referring himself to the Commons’ assessment of the need. It was no coincidence that while the king was tending to think less often of parliament, Pierrepont was coming to regard it ever more highly, as he made quite clear in the philosophical kernel of his speech:

214


Unlimited power must be in some, to make and repeal laws to fit the dispositions of times and persons – nature places this in common consent only, and where all cannot conveniently meet, instructeth them to give their consents to some they know or believe so well of as to be bound by what they agree on. His Majesty, your Lordships and the Commons are thus met in Parliament, and so long as we are often reduced to this main foundation our King and we shall prosper.31 One thing to note is that taken in conjunction with the previous quotations this is a particularly clear statement of the most discernible basis for a developing concept of “absolute” property, along the lines described in Macpherson’s analysis of Hobbes.32 Here, perhaps more plainly than anywhere, we have an authoritative expression of the general currency of the notion that each individual was now “so much master of whatsoever he possessed, that it could not be taken from him upon any pretence of public safety without his own consent”. The speech thus illuminates the crucial but in some ways rather obscure process of the consolidation of the rights of ownership, and thereby highlights an important plank of parliament’s ambitions. It also reflects the way that this involved the assumption of a right to judge the cause. And there was of course a much more explicit level of association between the representative principle and the quality of being “absolute”. The most striking feature of Pierrepont’s speech was his enunciation of the idea that “common consent” was the only justification of “unlimited” power. This very elevated view of parliament’s position was obviously based on the theory of legislative sovereignty which had emerged in England in the mid-sixteenth century, and which has already been frequently referred to above. Pierrepont was in fact offering the most cogent and complete summary of the character and power of the concept. His words graphically underlined how that new idea of autonomous legislative sovereignty derived its force from representative consent, and he demonstrated how the growing importance of this service could create a demand for parliament to figure more prominently and permanently in the processes of government. It illustrates once again the kind of practical consciousness that was at work here. We are not dealing with a constitutionalist ideology, but rather with the working significance, both economic and political, that these commonly received notions about representative rights and legislative sovereignty had for Pierrepont, and many other people. The development of the idea that the king was at his most absolute “in parliament” has already been outlined above. We have heard it voiced


215

by James Whitelocke in the Commons in 1610, and echoed by Lord Digby in 1641.33 But Pierrepont’s direct association of “unlimited power” with “common consent” underlined most clearly of all how this paradoxical concept might find a natural resolution in the advancement of parliament. Pierrepont’s very precise picture of the representative process had also been outlined before in the Commons. Sir Edwin Sandys, the foremost opponent of royal policy under James I, had described it in almost identical language as early as 1606.34 The notion of encompassing the consent of “every man” (Sandys), or “all” (Pierrepont), was perhaps not intended as literally as it would be today. But it nevertheless illustrated the reality of the link between legislative power and the principle of representation. This was what gave parliament the authority to bind the whole nation to laws and taxes, and made it the essential ingredient in the concept of legislative sovereignty in England. Theory and practice were mutually reinforcing. The uniquely responsive yet definitive character of statute law made it an ever more desirable means to “fit the dispositions of times and persons”. Thus Pierrepont could define parliament as the “main foundation”, because he could regard the legislative function as both the most practically needful and the most theoretically unlimited power. It was a natural step to go on to propose that parliament’s place in political life should also be less limited. This was clearly in line with the position of other parliamentary leaders, as already cited. It was much the same conclusion as that reached by John Pym in February 1641, when, in welcoming the Triennial Act as the basis of future government, he declared that the legislative power, “which can only be used in parliaments”, was “that which makes and constitutes a kingdom”.35 Like Pierrepont, he had come to look upon parliament as the “main foundation”. Both now believed that guaranteed, regular assemblies were essential for the good governance of the realm. Right from the early months of the Long Parliament, Pierrepont’s distinctive contribution was in promoting initiatives which transferred a significant degree of political authority from king to parliament, beginning with the measures which freed parliament from the king’s discretion over its assembly. Lucy Hutchinson tells us that “by him was that bill promoted and carried on which passed for the continuation of this parliament”.36 The wording suggests that she was referring to the act passed on 10 May 1641 “That this Parliament should not be adjourned, prorogued or dissolved, but by Act of Parliament.” There has been a tendency to diminish the radical significance of this measure by suggesting

216


that its main inspiration was the need for security for City loans, rather than a readiness for constitutional change.37 The act did refer itself to the need for loan security, but this can be seen as much as a pretext as a motivation. The measure was mainly a response to signs in the preceding weeks that Charles was attempting to free himself from parliament and contemplating the use of force, as indicated by the Army Plot. In this situation, MPs were so determined to keep their assembly in being that a majority of the House was prepared to dispense with important aspects of the traditional constitution. Clarendon recorded that it was “not credible, what a universal reception and concurrence this motion met with, which was to remove the landmarks and to destroy the foundations of the Kingdom”. He was equally surprised by the speed with which it was pushed through: “a committee was immediately appointed to withdraw and prepare a short bill for that purpose; which was in a short time (less than an hour) brought into the House, and immediately second read and committed (an expedition never before heard of in Parliament)”.38 If Pierrepont was indeed instrumental in this, it was not the last time he would demonstrate a capacity for pushing through radical measures with great despatch. It has alternatively been suggested that Lucy Hutchinson was referring to the Triennial Act itself, the slightly earlier measure of February 1641, by which, as we have already seen, parliament was empowered to meet automatically in future if the king failed to call it. In fact, Notestein assumed that this was the act in question, and pointed out that this did not necessarily contradict other indications that William Strode introduced the measure, since he and Pierrepont often worked closely together.39 And the local historian Thomas Bailey, who was still in contact with the traditions of Nottinghamshire history, said simply: “William Pierrepont at the early part of this session – brought forward and carried into law that important measure, the Triennial Bill.”40 There is no other indication that he was directly involved with this bill, but it certainly gave force to the insistent demand for parliament’s services that he outlined so clearly in his speech against Ship Money. I have attempted in Chapter 6 to bring the value of the Triennial Act into proper focus, and to show that contrary to current belief it had the most prominent and positive place in parliament’s ambitions. It was not associated with the need for loan security as has often been supposed. On the contrary, the parliamentary leaders were prepared to put the Subsidy Bill at some risk by using it to force through the Triennial Act because the latter was regarded as the indispensable core of parliament’s reform programme. And the fact that it was necessary to


217

apply this pressure confirmed the revolutionary nature of the act. It is thus wrong to suppose that the Long Parliament did not become radical until the winter of 1641–1642, when it began to claim a voice in ministerial appointments. Furthermore, there was a natural link between the Triennial Act and these later initiatives for it was stated in justification of the act that it would give parliament a continuous influence over the conduct, if not the choice, of ministers.41 It is therefore no surprise to find the same politicians who spearheaded the drive for continual parliaments also leading the demands for parliamentary supervision of ministers and militia – men like John Pym, Oliver Cromwell, William Strode and William Pierrepont. In the wake of the need for an army to deal with the Irish Rebellion, and the king’s attempt to arrest the 5 Members, there was in particular a growing determination to ensure that the militia and the forts should be placed in the hands of men whom parliament could trust. Pierrepont now came to further prominence as a central figure in the effort to achieve these guarantees. From early January, he acted as the principal spokesperson for the Commons in their attempt to persuade a hesitant House of Lords that the king should be obliged to accept the removal of Sir John Byron as Lieutenant of the Tower. At the successful conclusion of this campaign on 8 February 1642, Byron himself recorded Pierrepont’s speech to the Upper House, in which he plainly stated his willingness that parliament should assume independent public authority. After asserting the necessity of putting the forts “into such hands as may be confided in”, Pierrepont added: “as for the extent of this power, and the continuance of it both the one and the other should be left to the Parliament”. Byron hoped that they would not be allowed the “unlimited power” they sought.42 Perhaps it was the determination with which Pierrepont set about this affair that led to him being chosen on 14 January 1642 to chair the all important committee (moved by Cromwell) on the overall settlement of the militia, with the controversial task of bringing it under parliamentary control. Despite the delicate nature of the problem, a solution was put in place with surprising speed. On 15 January, Pierrepont reported from the committee, and arranged for MPs “to declare unto the committee the names of such noble persons as they thought fit to be Lords Lieutenant in their several counties”.43 This was the most tactful method of establishing which peers could be “confided in”, and it left the fall-back position that when Pierrepont brought the list of recommendations to the House, the full assembly could reject those who were still regarded by the leadership as having shown blatantly court leanings in the 1630s.

218


But the most crucial stage in the process was not so much who should be appointed but how – in other words to find a way in which parliament could authorise the Lords Lieutenant without reference to the king. The answer emerged with very little delay. On 18 January, at a special open committee, apparently again chaired by Pierrepont, it was resolved, “these men to be appointed by Ordinance of Parliament”.44 This posed a fundamental and comprehensive challenge to the power of the crown, usurping the monarch’s military, executive and legislative functions, and striking at the original defining character of the monarch’s role. It was clearly in some sense entailed in Pierrepont’s concept of the “unlimited power” that derived from the representative principle. But there was always the question of how far this was to be taken and applied in political practice. And it is not difficult to see how others less radically inclined might regard it as having already gone a good deal too far. Not surprisingly it was the issue on which many Royalists decided their allegiance. Clarendon, who was in a better position than anyone to sum up Royalist motives, suggested that notwithstanding the many other factors involved, the Ordinance could probably be described as “the sole cause and ground” of the quarrel.45 If we are seeking a particular moment when military conflict became inevitable, the implementation of the Militia Ordinance is by far the most plausible candidate. And through the coming months, Pierrepont remained at the forefront of parliament’s drive to enforce the Ordinance and resist the king’s attempt to raise troops by the Commission of Array.46 By passing the Militia Ordinance, parliament was not only asserting control of the armed forces and usurping the king’s executive powers, but also assuming the right to legislate on its own authority. This radical departure did not come entirely out of the blue. The order against Laudian ceremonial in early September 1641 had been the first occasion on which the Commons showed a readiness to issue definitive legal provisions independently of the king. And the distinctive potential of the representative body in this respect was illustrated two months previously in Pierrepont’s promotion of the “unlimited power” of legislation which could only come from “common consent”. This was the foundation for the appropriation of sovereignty which took shape in the Militia Ordinance. This was how it was interpreted by many Royalists, and it seems to have been a crucial factor for them. It is illustrated by a letter written to the Nottinghamshire MPs in July 1642 by 70 of the leading gentry, who were to form the core of the Royalist cause in the county. They approved the measures passed by parliament – until the Militia Ordinance. They


219

embraced the representative basis of sovereign law. It was “our greatest privilege that the King and Lords could not make a law to bind us without our consent in parliament”. But they believed that the king’s assent was still a necessary part of the equation. “We shall not conceive ourselves bound to obey one or both Houses without the King we never conceived your only votes would be our law nor to engage us in any civil war for the maintenance of such votes.”47 In the light of what has been said in foregoing chapters about the crucial significance of legislative power, it is of some interest that the spark for the Civil War was in effect an initiative by parliament to make law in its own right. In the winter of 1640–1641, a large majority of MPs had accepted the centrality of the representative principle so far as to elevate parliament to a permanent place in political life. The smaller majority of the summer of 1642 were those who were prepared to take that principle to the next stage. And the logic of parliament’s representative capacity, as the essential element in the concept of legislative sovereignty in England, could, without much overextension, become a basis on which parliament could justify legislating under its own power. Pierrepont’s stance can be further clarified by a comparison with the positions of other members of his family as war approached. His father, Robert, has been noted for his reluctance to give his allegiance (or his money) to either side in the conflict. It has even been suggested that economic prudence led him to “divide his sons between both parties”, as an insurance that the vast estates he had built up would be retained whatever the outcome of the war.48 He made a well-known statement in defence of his initial neutrality – “when I take up arms with the King against the Parliament, or with the Parliament against the King, let a cannon-bullet divide me between them”49 , which is often quoted by those who want to emphasise the importance of neutralism in the struggle. But it can be interpreted differently. It not only expresses an unwelcome dilemma, but also illustrates the real political choice which had arisen – a balance of authority where king and parliament could be given equal weight. And in truth it is clear that the Earl of Kingston’s sons had strong allegiances of principle to the sides that they favoured. The younger son, Francis, commanded a regiment under the parliamentary garrison in Nottingham, and was described by Lucy Hutchinson as “in the main well affected to honest men and righteous liberty”.50 Though he was, she said, “not of education according to his quality”. But both William and his elder brother, Henry, were of an undeniably intellectual turn and training, though their deliberations took them in different political directions.51 When summoned to the Lords as Baron

220


Pierrepont on 11 January 1641, Henry immediately joined a protest against supporting William’s efforts to bring the Lieutenant of the Tower under parliamentary authority.52 He then spoke in favour of the bishops retaining their seats in the Lords, and defended their right to “intermeddle” in temporal affairs;53 while conversely, in June 1641 in the Commons, William helped to organise moves to have the bishops excluded from the legislature.54 As this implies, however, William was interested in reforming and limiting episcopacy, rather than abolishing it. In fact, as we shall see, he was a convinced Episcopalian, though clearly on the opposite wing to his brother. Henry doubtless endorsed the letter of leading Nottinghamshire gentry protesting against parliament’s assumption of the right to legislate on its own authority, a letter provoked in particular, as we have seen, by the Militia Ordinance. He then played an active part in raising forces for the king. William, on the other hand, was obviously at the very forefront of the drive to give parliament a decisive voice in the control of the militia. In this sense the issue got rather personal – the Ordinance actually displaced Henry as Lord Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire. The comparison between the two brothers is rather poignant, and suggests that their father was trying to hold a balance within his family as well as in the broader context. It is also very instructive. The central question deciding Civil War allegiance emerges quite clearly once again – how far did one take parliament’s claim to independent authority? At the adjournment of 4 July, with war now clearly unavoidable, Pierrepont was among the ten MPs (with five peers) named to form the Committee of Safety. As S.R. Gardiner pointed out, this provided a government for the parliamentarian cause.55 In the winter of 1642– 1643, when parliament’s military position seemed most precarious, Pierrepont seems briefly to have turned towards the Peace Party. Sir Simonds D’Ewes noted that with the king marching towards London in November 1642, Pierrepont was among those “who had formerly been very opposite against an accommodation (but) did now speak earnestly for it”.56 D’Ewes thought that Pierrepont may have been influenced by the fact that his brother Henry was now in arms with the king. There seems indeed to have been some truth in this. Pierrepont suggested that in their propositions to Charles, they need not demand justice against all delinquents, “ but only some for example”.57 It would scarcely have been surprising if the growing prospect of his brothers lining up in battle against one another had made Pierrepont think that much more seriously about a settlement. At the same time he stood firm against the views of Denzil Holles, who was already proposing to drop parliament’s


221

demand for a supervisory influence over government. Pierrepont’s dealings with the Peace Party were always somewhat tenuous. On 17 February he opposed the Lords’ suggestion that a cessation of hostilities should precede a treaty. He thought that “the people” would approve of his stance, and that taxes would be paid more readily if it was clear that the struggle was continuing.58 This is a quite striking indication of the very positive light in which he viewed the parliamentarian cause, and is another example of confidence in its popularity. In mid-July 1643, when peace initiatives were floated by Essex, D’Ewes hoped that Pierrepont would speak in favour, but in the end he sided with the majority in opposing the move.59 The traditional crude division of MPs into War Party and Peace Party has now been usefully supplemented by the interpolation of a “middlegroup”, holding the balance, and Pierrepont is rightly regarded as a member of this group. Their moderation, however, can be overemphasised. For while they certainly avoided the extreme positions of doctrinaire Puritanism and republicanism, they were nevertheless determined to pursue the war vigorously and bring the king to terms which would keep the royal government permanently in line with the public interest as reflected in parliament. In other words, they were looking for something not unlike the new constitutional balance which took a settled form in England after 1688. And we should not let our fears of the false demon of “hindsight” conceal the fact that this was so. Valerie Pearl produced one of the clearest perspectives on the middle group, referring to them as “premature constitutional monarchists”.60 It was an accurate enough description of their position. Pierrepont had more opportunity than most to make a direct personal contribution towards bringing about such a settlement. His managerial and diplomatic skills meant that he was always included among the parliamentary commissioners for the various rounds of negotiations. His tactfulness was noted at the early talks at Oxford in February and March 1643. He was said to have “acted his part with great foresight and prudence and was exceeding courteous to his fellow commissioners”.61 In fact, as Clarendon recorded, he put forward a plan to break the deadlock at the talks. Observing that the king would never agree to surrender the bishops, and parliament would never agree to surrender control of the armed forces, Pierrepont suggested that if Charles would give ground on the latter point, then parliament’s demand for the abolition of episcopacy might be shelved. Clarendon and Nicholas endorsed the plan, but the king refused.62

222


This compromise on the future of episcopacy was a characteristic stance for Pierrepont. In putting it forward he was not sacrificing his own religious views on the altar of an agreement. He did not object to the very existence of bishops, like some parliamentarians. In fact, in the House on 8th November 1643, Pierrepont confirmed his preference for retaining some form of episcopacy.63 His main proviso, as we have seen, was that the bishops should be shorn of the central and political powers that the Laudians had exercised so autocratically in the 1630s. There is no sign that he regarded the Laudians as crypto-Catholics, as some did, but he regularly expressed his distaste for “popery”. This too had a political dimension: in the House on 3 January 1643, he suggested that, “if we suppress popery we settle liberty in the Commonwealth, for papists have their hands in many things”.64 Not unlike Ireton, he was applying the concept of liberty in both spheres. Thus, popery was to be countered by “the planting of a religious ministry” or “the ministry of the Gospel”.65 It seems that Pierrepont favoured what is often called primitive episcopacy, in which the authority of the bishops was essentially pastoral and evangelical, without political power. His view obviously differed from that of Yonge and Ireton in as far as their habits of worship had already taken them outside the standard provisions of the church, and they were among those who would have been happy to see the back of the bishops. But at a different level there was a similar character to the balance of Pierrepont’s preferences. And the point at which he connected most closely to the Puritan position was the distaste he seems to have felt for the exercise of compulsion in church affairs. The religious question was brought to a head by the Scottish alliance. Pierrepont was reluctant to subscribe to the Solemn League and Covenant because it involved the end of episcopacy, and implied the acceptance of a theocratic Presbyterian system along Scottish lines. Although this offered a less hierarchical ministry than the bishops, it gave the clergy even greater powers of coercive discipline. The package was unacceptable to Pierrepont, and he asked leave from the House to consider his position.66 In the end he was persuaded to set aside his scruples: “they were so desirous of his assistance, being a gentleman of wisdom and integrity, that they gave him a friendly denial”.67 Despite these reservations, Pierrepont sat on the Committee of Both Kingdoms, but it soon became clear that in any case the alliance would not provide the decisive united front that was hoped for. Although the Scots were certainly committed to the struggle by their own lights, their priorities were always significantly different, and this goes a long way to explain the divisions that arose between the allies. We have already


223

seen David Stevenson’s description of the inception of the Scottish Revolution as essentially religious in purpose and character.68 English aims were predominantly political, and this had further implications in the religious field. The Scots sought conformity to the “best Reformed” church that they believed now existed within their own borders. They had a structured experience of the reformation that did not really gel with the flexible requirements of many English groups. The Scots were thus steadily frustrated by the erastian and “tolerationist” inclinations of the English parliament.69 Disappointed in this, and with less definite political aims, the Scots found it easier than their allies to contemplate a peace with the king that did not necessarily involve permanent restraints on the royal power. And they seem to have believed that they could prevail upon Charles to accept their favoured form of Presbyterianism.70 Thus it was that by November 1644, Pierrepont and the middle group found themselves making common cause with the independents and republicans in the House of Commons in order to oppose the Scottish and Presbyterian agenda, which threatened to embrace an intolerant clericalism and an unconditional treaty with the king.71 Pierrepont continued to play a central role in the attempts to negotiate more acceptable terms. For the Uxbridge talks of January 1645, he seems often to have taken charge of coordinating parliament’s propositions and responses.72 He did not however display his previous degree of patience with Charles’s point of view. Clarendon found that Pierrepont “seemed to have contracted more bitterness and sourness than formerly and insisted that the King yield to whatsoever was demanded”.73 But Pierrepont’s basic position had not really changed. Probably the one substantial difference was that he had lost any leeway he may once have assumed to vary the proposals on religion. For the time being, the balance of power and alliances on the parliamentary side meant that episcopacy could no longer be considered on the menu. And along with the other leading parliamentarian commissioners, he continued to press the king to agree to parliamentary supervision of the militia. Once again, Charles’s refusal on this count ended the prospects for the treaty.74 Pierrepont was prominent in advancing the military reorganisation which was to provide parliament with an army capable of bringing the war to an end. Like other middle-group leaders, he promoted the SelfDenying Ordinance, which aimed to remove the Peace Party lords Essex and Manchester from their commands. It was Pierrepont who carried the Ordinance up the Lords in December 1644, once again finding himself in the position of trying to persuade a resistant second chamber to accept a radical measure which struck at the very essence of the power of the

224


military elite. The task was becoming more difficult. In January 1645 he returned to it as part of a deputation which tried unsuccessfully to bully the Lords into accepting the measure.75 The Upper House was naturally reluctant to participate in the demise of its own authority, but it was on the horns of a dilemma – ultimately it could not prevent the rise of the New Model Army. The end of the war, however, did not bring a settlement. Charles typically sought to keep his cause alive by whatever means he could, and a disgruntled Scottish army hovered in the wings. As one of the English commissioners to that army, it was Pierrepont who officially informed parliament of the king’s flight to the Scots in May 1646. In October of the same year, parliament employed Pierrepont’s pen to rebut various Scottish claims. To their complaint that they had not been paid, he replied that both armies were financed by the same kind of public levy, and the reason that the assessments for the Scots were not forthcoming was perhaps because they had made little contribution to the cause. He said that parliament had expected that they would help to advance “the public service of the Kingdom, by engaging with the Common enemy we have found ourselves disappointed in these hopes”. The Scots, he said, had remained in the north, “where no enemy was”.76 Perhaps the most interesting aspect of these comments is the repetition of Pierrepont’s familiar assumption that the public would be happy to pay for the vigorous prosecution of the cause. We clearly have to allow for some degree of personal hostility in Pierrepont’s attitude to the Scots. Like Cromwell and Ireton, he had early discovered that the balance of Scottish aims was significantly different from his own. By 1646, he was expressing the predominant Independent/Middle-Group view that the Scots were no longer to be regarded as dependable allies in furthering parliamentarian ambitions vis-à-vis the king. Thus the most important point that he had to refute was the idea that the Scots had an equal and direct interest in the settlement with the king in England. His principal argument was that the League and Covenant had been forged for specific common purposes, and that for the Scots to claim that “the King relates to both Kingdoms the same” was “confounding the particular rights of the two Kingdoms”.77 Through 1647, the New Model Army became actively politicised, and Pierrepont and the middle group supported the generals and the Independents in resisting Scottish and Peace Party/Presbyterian demands for disbandment and a sell-out treaty with the king.78 It was during the Army’s stand against dispersal that Henry Ireton emerged as the political spokesperson for the New Model. He was regarded as the principal hand


225

(and mind) behind the justifications of political intervention that now began to issue from headquarters. In looking at these declarations this study places no particular significance on the question of how far they can be attributed to him personally as author. They are taken simply as reflecting the position of people like Ireton at the time, though for ease of description they are sometimes referred to as if simply written by him. The motives behind the politicisation of the Army in the spring of 1647 have been the subject of much debate, as has the associated question of when radical or Leveller inclinations first appeared among the rank and file. The usual tendency now is to place most emphasis on the importance of material grievances, such as arrears of pay, as the “dominant motive” behind Army insubordination.79 It has been calculated that those arrears were indeed substantial.80 But this was in part precisely because the New Model was, in principle and usually in practice, better paid and resourced than most armies of the time. The revisionist view has sometimes seemed rather contradictory, appearing to suggest that the problem was neither a reluctance of the Peace Party to settle the arrears, nor a concern to move against what they perceived as dangerous elements in the Army.81 But there clearly was contention of some kind. It is in fact probable that the material grievances could have been settled if they had really been the main issue. It would scarcely have been necessary for the Peace Party to confront the Army if it had not feared a predisposition to political activity. Their fears were well grounded. It has sometimes been suggested that the disposition of the Army “changed dramatically” at the end of May, when some regiments refused to disband, and that it was only with the declarations of midJune that the influence of the Levellers really began to be felt.82 But in truth, the Leveller inclination is apparent long before that, and radical sentiment was present at many levels in the Army. It was at the beginning of March that the Peace Party/Presbyterians launched their attempt to undermine the power of the Independent generals with a provision that none but Fairfax was to have a rank above colonel, no MPs were to hold command, and that only those who were prepared to take the Covenant should serve as officers.83 The targeting of Cromwell could hardly have been more transparent. The attack was based partly on an awareness that the generals would never be happy with a settlement that did not impose strict conditions on the king, and that they therefore formed a major obstacle to Peace Party plans.84 It also reflected the disquiet that was already felt about radical activities in the ranks. One aspect of this was the increasing boldness

226


of lay preaching by Independent troopers. This was Ireton’s “freedom and enlargement to the Gospel” taken to a rather extreme conclusion. In December, a City petition asserted that the usurping of pulpits by preaching soldiers was “daily complained of”. The Commons accepted the force of the petition.85 On 4 February 1647, parliament passed an ordinance prescribing imprisonment for unordained preaching. To the Independents, this underlined the need to defend “intellectual” and consensual freedoms against “bodily” rules. To the Peace Party it was another reason to try to break the Independent grip on the Army. Least acceptable of all to the New Model was the Essex petition of 11 March. Its assertion that the kingdom was being “eaten up, enslaved and destroyed” by the army is much quoted.86 This certainly caused deep offence among the soldiery, as well as a good deal of incredulity, and a suspicion that there was a conspiracy to discredit them. Less often noted is the petition’s counter-claim that there were subversive tendencies in the ranks, and that the Army harboured “men of erroneous judgements and opposite to the government of the parliament, who make it their business in all places where they come to work upon the ignorantist people which tends to the destruction of all good government, either in church or commonwealth”.87 The petition was evidently well justified in claiming that the open practice of lay-preaching was undermining ministerial authority in the church, and that the soldiers were very much involved in this. As a corollary of this assertion of liberty, the troops had also been reported as being unhappy with the prospect of the imposition of Presbyterian discipline. The question of what kind of threat the soldiers offered to the political establishment is more complex. Some illumination is provided by Thomas Edwards, in his ongoing critical commentaries on the radical movements. He dismissed the idea that the army was principally concerned about its pay, noting that no army had ever been better provided for, and they were constantly heard to say that they had been fighting for their liberties. He gained a more precise indication of political tendencies in the army from two witnesses who had testified that on 12 August 1646, a captain in Colonel Hammond’s regiment had asserted that the House of Commons was the Parliament of England, and not only a part of it – an opinion which the rest of the army shared.88 It was a plausible picture of the balance of views among the radicals. They were opposed to the policies of the present regime, which they regarded as hostile, but they still claimed to uphold, and to have been fighting for the authority of parliament. And if they had come to attribute that authority to the Commons alone, this was a principle


227

that had always been entailed in the concept of legislative sovereignty that underpinned the parliamentarian cause. In fact, as we shall see, there were mainstream MPs who at the very same time were taking that formula in the same direction as the army radicals. By mid-March 1647, the troops were reinforcing the view of them as a radical body by circulating a petition of their own. It was said to cover a wide range of grievances, including arrears of pay, an unwillingness to embark on the Irish campaign without their familiar generals, and other “jealousies”.89 The petition was a subversive proceeding in itself, which the generals realised had at the very least to be legitimised by being channelled through the authority of Fairfax. This was the “first innocent soldiers’ petition” that Wildman accused Cromwell and Ireton of trying to stop. Some of the officers later defended themselves against attack from the other direction by confirming that they had “engaged but in the second place to regulate the soldiers proceedings and remove all occasion of distaste”.90 On 26 March there emerged an “Apology of the Soldiers to their Officers.”91 In fact this was not notably apologetic. It was aimed at bringing the officers, as it were, into line with the ranks, and it gave a more transparent indication of the level of politicisation that already existed in the Army. It claimed to represent “the whole soldiery”, who had “served under your command to free this land from all tyranny and oppression whatsoever”. More specifically, the writers characterised the cause as “the preservation of the Gospel, the liberty of the subject, and the just rights and privileges of parliament”. They complained that they were now being condemned for exercising the rights for which they had been fighting. They said that their enemies were trying to prevent them “speaking in the behalf of this just and lawful service in which we have served them, which we do render in respect of our liberties ten thousand times more than our arrears”. Material grievances were clearly not the mainspring of their political activities. There was a long section protesting against the persecution of the Leveller leaders – “who have shown themselves with us, and for us” and “among whom we number ourselves”. This is fairly explicit. Historians who downplay the early politicisation of the ranks seem to overlook this document, and then proceed to dismiss as “thoroughly mistaken” the April newsletters which confirm the very same developments.92 In truth, it is quite clear that political activism and Leveller sympathies were already powerful in the Army by the end of March 1647, and doubtless for some time before. We should be careful not to regard this merely in the light of outside influences, or to underestimate the pre-existing basis for politicisation

228


among the soldiery. Now they urged their officers to join with them in a united front to resist disbandment. The appeal did not fall on deaf ears. A substantial body of the officers had already concluded that their best policy was in effect to place themselves at the head of the agitation. A group of them, with Ireton the most senior, had in fact launched a petition of their own, which also included the demand to be satisfied regarding the command structure envisaged for the Irish service.93 The petition had effectively become a joint soldiers’ and officers’ initiative, which greatly increased the force of it. The Peace Party/Presbyterians had long been apprehensive of the political potential of the New Model. The irony was that in attempting to pre-empt it, they had only succeeded in provoking it into action. Their response to the petition was to order it to cease. When they heard that this instruction had been ineffectual, they declared that those who continued to subscribe the petition were to be regarded as “enemies of the state and disturbers of the public peace”.94 Nothing could have been better calculated to consolidate the political determination of the New Model. When the implicated officers appeared before the bar of the Commons they were not at all repentant. They denied the charge of encouraging and orchestrating the soldiers’ petition, and demanded to see the proof of the allegations. Ireton seems to have gone furthest in justifying the soldiers’ right to proceed in this manner, and he and the Peace Party leader Denzil Holles were barely prevented from coming to blows.95 Holles and his colleagues appear to have believed that they could retain support among the Presbyterian elements in the New Model, and combine them with other military options, such as a London militia also purged of Independent influence, to create a viable but obedient military force. Meanwhile, the Army began to equip itself with more formal political structures. By the end of April some of the cavalry regiments were each electing two “agitators” as their representatives. On 25 May, increasingly confident of a deal with the king, the Peace Party decided to bite the bullet and order the New Model to disband. Their instructions were again ineffectual, and simply countered by demands for justice against those who were seeking to undermine the Army. Checkmate followed on 3 June, when the king was taken from parliamentary custody into the direct control of the New Model. As a corollary, the Army required an articulated political programme. This was principally the work of Henry Ireton. On 5 June 1647 came forth the Solemn Engagement of the Army.96 It went back over the recent past, noting how the disallowance of the petition had obliged


229

them to turn to more systematic forms of political organisation. They promised, indeed, to “cheerfully and readily disband” – but only once they had secured their position, and the freedoms for which they had been fighting. Failing such satisfaction – “we shall not suffer ourselves to be disbanded or divided”. These words were written on behalf of an Army whose claim to political solidarity was no empty boast. There followed on 14 June, the Representation of the Army,97 which offered an outline of the kind of provision for the future with which they might be satisfied. Their political initiative was justified by the famous declaration that they were “not a mere mercenary army”, but had an equal stake in the defence of the rights and liberties for which they had fought. A purge of parliament was already envisaged, but it was expected that this would be performed by the Houses themselves, against those who were seen as conspicuously guilty of backsliding from the parliamentarian cause. In positive terms, the Army’s proposals echoed what has been suggested in this study as the core proposition of the parliamentarian revolution – that is, the establishment of a new governmental balance based on a guaranteed succession of parliaments, no longer subject to the discretion of the monarch. This, said Ireton, was “according to the intent of the bill for Triennial Parliaments”. And the desire to confirm the principle of representation at the heart of political practice was backed up by proposals for electoral reform, in the way that was to become Ireton’s particular trademark. The character of these propositions lent a good deal of conviction to the Army’s claim to be considered as the genuine champion of mainstream parliamentarianism. Indeed, the document included a statement of the underlying basis of parliament’s position, just as it had been outlined by Pierrepont at the very beginning of the struggle. Ireton spoke of the Commons as “entrusted in the people’s behalf for their interest in that great and supreme power of the commonwealth (viz. the legislative power, with the power of final judgments)”. This was “the great and supreme trust” to which “the people have a right to new and successive elections at certain periods of time”. It was essentially the same formula as already embraced by Pym and Pierrepont in 1641, whereby the practical and philosophical importance of representative law was the basis for projecting a permanent presence for the assembly at the centre of political life. In Ireton’s turn of phrase, however, the implication of parliamentary supremacy can be more clearly visualised. Given so much common ground, it is not too surprising to find Pierrepont and his colleagues continuing to line up with the New Model generals in their dispute with the Peace Party. Having established their

230


place at the political table, the Army now laid charges of impeachment against 11 of their principal opponents in parliament, alleging a Presbyterian plot to destroy the Army, restore Charles with the aid of the Scots, and ferment a new war. The accused Peace Party leaders made some attempt to resist, with the aid of the London “mob”. This proved counter-productive when a body of about 80 MPs, including Pierrepont, placed themselves under the protection of the Army, which entered the capital in force in August 1647.98 The position of the Independent/middle-group alliance had been restored, at least for the time being. There was also an opportunity for them to try to bring Charles to the kind of settlement that they could regard as acceptable and secure. It was now the Army’s turn to take the lead in this rather thankless task, but the middle-group leaders actively backed the generals in their attempt to get Charles to agree to the “Heads of the Proposals” as the basis for a settlement. Pierrepont combined with Cromwell, Fiennes, Ireton, Oliver St John and Henry Vane to persuade the Commons to adopt the proposals.99 In fact, Pierrepont’s contribution to these negotiations may have been more direct than is usually supposed. The terms are assumed to have been drafted, as usual, by Commissary-General Ireton, and this was no doubt the case. But it would have been surprising if the generals had received no direct input and advice from their politically more experienced middle-group allies, and the proposals actually bear a striking resemblance to Pierrepont’s own consistent priorities, especially regarding the provision of a tolerant religious settlement based on a moderated episcopacy without coercive powers.100 It seems very likely that Pierrepont would have promoted this as the most likely point of balance between the king, the generals, and himself. The Heads of the Proposals also took a moderate line in that they did not propose to remove the king’s legislative veto, as the Levellers and Army radicals were now recommending. To keep the activities of government in line with the public interest, Ireton began, as before, with the core proposition of parliamentarianism – that is, the institution of regular, guaranteed assemblies. The Triennial Act of 1641 was to be confirmed and strengthened – “that parliaments may be biennially called and meet at a certain day, with such provision for the certainty thereof, as in the late act was made for Triennial parliaments; and what further or other provision shall be found needful by the Parliament to reduce it to more certainty”.101 He again included proposals for electoral reform – “according to some rule of equality or proportion to render the House of Commons (as near as


231

may be) an equal representative of the whole to take off the elections of burgesses for poor decayed towns and to give some present addition to great counties that have now less than their due proportion”. This was not yet “one person, one vote”, but it was the confirmation of a genuine commitment to the concept of public representation. So far, Ireton was simply asserting and consolidating the basic principles of the parliamentarian cause. It was when he addressed the detail of what to do about the control of ministers and militia that things became less clear. In the context of the original Triennial Act, the parliamentary leaders had relied on the expectation that the mere presence or assurance of regular parliaments would be enough to guarantee the good behaviour of royal ministers. In retrospect it was a gloriously simple idea, certainly in comparison with what was put forward in the Heads of the Proposals. The biggest bone of contention, the militia, was to be “ordered and disposed” by parliament for ten years, and then only with parliamentary consent thereafter. But there was also to be a Council of State, which would act as the king’s Privy Council, to “superintend and direct” military and foreign affairs – again, as long as this was done with the consent of parliament. The first incumbents, for up to seven years, were to be agreed on now. There was a further separate provision for “great offices” in general. They were to be filled by parliament’s choice (or by its committees in the intervals between assemblies) for ten years. After that, parliament was to nominate three, and the king to choose one out of that number to fill vacancies as they arose. The complexity of the web in part reflected the difficulty of the problem. It was the question first addressed by the Triennial Act in 1641, and not really solved for many decades – how did you keep ministers in line with the public interest as defined by parliament without actually destroying the idea of them being the king’s ministers? In government, Charles could probably have exploited the fine detail of these proposals to his own ends, but he preferred to reject them. This exposed Ireton and his fellow generals to the anger of the Army radicals for having tried so hard to accommodate the king. The Levellers and the Agitators had been developing their own favoured alternative – the institution of a democratic franchise, on the basis of natural rights. Cromwell and Ireton were not without sympathy for some aspects of the radical position, and they had powerful motives for maintaining that relationship. So rather than dismiss the idea out of hand, they offered to debate it. Ireton began by pointing out that the Army’s declarations were not intended to encourage the undermining of any authority at will. He

232


asserted the concept of civil right. But it is important to note that when they discussed the claims of authority, they were not referring to the king, but rather to what Ireton called “that supreme authority the parliament”. This is a crucial point that is often left unclear. In the minds of these men the concept of supreme authority had now come to be focused on parliament, underlining once again how the parliamentarian position was based on that defining share in legislative sovereignty. On this they could agree. Sexby too spoke of “Parliamentary authority, which most here would lose their lives for.” So far they had asserted this principle with some success. But what should their attitude be to that supreme authority now? Ireton said that the Army’s disobedience and intervention had been merely to “rectify” the parliament. The aim was – “to have the constitution of the supreme authority of this kingdom reduced to that constitution which is due to the people of this kingdom by successive elections, as near as may be”.102 The Levellers could be forgiven for thinking that their solution was not too inappropriate in this light. They and Ireton did indeed share the same basic belief in the authority that derived from elective consent. The demand for guaranteed and regular assemblies that was a basic feature of Leveller proposals had also been the core proposition of mainstream parliamentarianism when it started out in the winter of 1640–1641. And the developing concept of sovereignty that underpinned that ambition drew its moral and rhetorical force from the notion of representing “everyone”. So Rainborough and his fellows had some foundation for advancing the proposition that logically everyone ought to have a vote. Ireton argued, in his most often cited contribution to the debate, that to maintain the stability of civil society, active political rights could only be allowed to those with property, or a proprietorial stake in trade. Rainborough did not see why this followed, but concluded, with heavy sarcasm, that if Ireton stated it for a rule then it must be so. The Levellers were not able to shift that social balance. But their intervention was significant in two crucial and connected ways. Through this window of opportunity had come the first airing of fully democratic principles in England. Equally important, we can see that this was no accident – the fact that the issue had been opened up for discussion underlined how the desire to establish representative forms lay at the heart of the parliamentarian movement as a whole. This is the context that often eludes studies of The Putney Debates, such as the 2001 collection edited by Michael Mendle. The element of common ground with the Levellers gave Ireton both strengths and weaknesses. It was in a slightly later exchange, less often


233

quoted, that he contrived to show how even those with no vote could be incorporated into the structures of representation. When Rainborough asked what the soldiers had fought for if they were now to be denied the vote and continue to be enslaved to property, Ireton replied with his own less direct but quite specific concept of general representative rights: I will tell you what the soldier of the kingdom hath fought for. First, the danger that we stood in was that one man’s will must be a law. The people of this Kingdom have this right at least, that they should not be concluded [but] by the Representative of those that have the interest of the Kingdom. Some men fought in this because they were considerably concerned and engaged in it. Other men who had no other interest in the Kingdom but this, that they should have the benefit of the laws made by the Representative They thought it was better to be concluded by the common consent of those that were fixed men. Every man that was born [in the country] is a denizen in it, that hath a freedom, he is capable of trading to get money, to get estates by, and therefore this man, I think had a great deal of reason to build up such a foundation of interest in himself: that is that the will of one man shall not be a law, but that the law of this kingdom shall be by a choice of person to represent, and that choice should be made by the generality of the Kingdom. Here was a right that induced men to fight.103 It was a clever and quite powerful argument by which a mainstream parliamentarian could meet the requirements of social hierarchy while maintaining the political thrust of representative theory. The propertyless were not to be granted democracy, but they could still partake of the general right of representation for which Ireton and, he believed, most others had fought. He was attempting to blunt the Levellers’ purposes by incorporating them into parliament’s central ambitions. It was not a complete tactical success. In the course of debate the generals were eventually moved some way towards accepting the idea of a broader franchise that the representative principle implied. But the Leveller thrust would soon be subsumed in the overall needs of the cause. Ireton had demonstrated the underlying strength and cohesive force of the parliamentarian position. He had referred himself to the vital principle around which the movement revolved, and to which parliamentarians at all levels of radicalisation could adhere: “That the will of one man shall not be a law.” Here, plainly stated in the context of Civil War motivation,

234


was the essence of that contrast and contest between “patent” and “parliament” that we have seen developing over the first few decades of the century. The sequence of causation is visible. Ireton’s words, clearly taking the idea that “one man’s will shall not be a law” and projecting it as a standard feature of government, showed how parliament’s defining share in legislative sovereignty, and the ongoing need for the legislative function, had crystallised into the insistence that the king should not rule simply through his own person, but that the regulation of the kingdom should now have an established representative element. Similarly, the notion that the people “should not be concluded except by the Representative” obviously entailed the need for parliament to assume a more permanent place at the centre of affairs, as envisaged by the Triennial Act, which Ireton regularly embraced. He gives perhaps the clearest and most concise expression of the constitutional psychology that lay at the heart of parliamentarianism. It amplifies more generalised comments, like Ludlow’s statement that they fought to “be governed by laws made by themselves under a government derived from their own consent”.104 Ireton describes the mechanics of this.105 Ireton’s formula also had, of course, an economic dimension. It is debateable how far down the social ladder he wanted to extend the freedom to trade “to get money, to get estates by”. But it was said in the context of broadening out the application of representative rights, and this is the important aspect for us here. This volume has emphasised how socio-economic needs underpinned the desire to give representative law and regulation a permanent place in the processes of government. “The right that induced men to fight” was not maintained in a vacuum. Parliament’s services were to be established and assured because they were of indispensable practical value. Ireton illustrates the interdependence of parliament’s socio-economic and political ambitions. The Commons was the direct representative of those who had a fixed property interest. This was their qualification, and their motivation. The arrangement also offered incentives for those who might seek to acquire such a stake. The general right of political representation was both the benefit and the guarantee of the capacity to “trade and get money”. The usefulness of legislation was one factor in the equation. Another was of course the representative control of taxation. The idea that one man’s will should not be a law went hand in hand with the idea that property could not be taken at the king’s discretion. Both these freedoms derived from the principle of consent. In effect, Ireton was outlining another facet of the emergence of absolute property as perceived by Hobbes. What Ireton’s formula implies is that the substance and


235

significance of “fixed interest” in the kingdom had developed to the point where it could provide a basis and a justification for resisting the interest of the king. J.A.W. Gunn touched on this some years ago when he identified Ireton’s defence of property rights at Putney as the first important public exposition of what was involved in having a stake in the kingdom.106 He thought that Ireton’s special contribution was the observation that “it doth not relate to the interest of the kingdom if it do not lay the foundation of the power that’s given to the representatives in those who have a permanent and a local interest in the kingdom, and who taken together do comprehend the whole interest of the kingdom”. Gunn saw this as an example of the public interest being derived from private interests. It was a vital insight. Much has been said above about the importance of the concept of representing “the whole” as a new moral basis for legislative sovereignty. It also had a material dimension. Ireton’s words indicate that the aggregate of property was now of such weight, both physically and psychologically, that it could be seen as literally comprising the kingdom, which was thus embodied in the House of Commons. This was the most fundamental sense in which the realm could come to be defined by something other than the person and discretionary rights of the monarch. Later in the debate the radicals followed up on the firm common ground that Ireton had identified, and set him an even more difficult question. If one man’s will was not to be a law, and the representative element was paramount, why had he had not denied the king’s legislative veto in the Heads of the Proposals? There was no logical answer to this, except that Ireton desired, for pragmatic reasons, to sustain the king as part of government. As usual, however, he rose to the challenge and managed to contrive a response. He resorted to the idea that the primacy of parliament in the law-making process was so historically evident and so clearly enunciated by MPs at the beginning of the conflict that it spoke for itself: “The parliament have declared and asserted that it is their right that the King ought not to deny any laws they offer him it is his oath they have gone further that if he did not confirm them they were laws without him. Upon this there hath been a war made.”107 The Levellers were taking the representative concept to its logical conclusion. If the binding force of sovereign law derived from the representative capacity of parliament, then ultimately it was anomalous that the king should be allowed to retain a legislative veto. But mainstream and socially conservative parliamentarians like Ireton had certainly not started out with the intention that the king might be effectively removed from the legislative picture. The original parliamentarian aim was simply

236


to rebalance the process of government so that the representative function could no longer be excluded from it. Even so, Ireton was prepared to acknowledge a good deal of the Levellers’ logic. In the final analysis, when the representative power of parliament and the will of the king came into opposition, then parliament should proceed without him. Ireton pointed out that this was the position they had adopted at the beginning of the crisis, and that they had continued de facto to govern and make laws on their own initiative ever since. If the king now confirmed these acts, he would clearly be acknowledging parliament’s assumption of residual authority. That was what the Civil War had been about.

9 The Sovereignty of Parliament

The final step. Walter Yonge’s notebook, and “Ireton’s Petition”. Ireton then, in his most moderate and spontaneous mode, in the Heads of the Proposals and at Putney, had placed himself convincingly in the mainstream of the parliamentarian movement. The struggle had been for the right to be governed by consent: or “not to be concluded [but] by the Representative”. This underpinned the demand for guaranteed and regular assemblies to which Ireton was so strongly committed. He thus hailed the Commons as the “supreme authority of the kingdom”, with “a great and supreme trust” that had to be renewed by certain and successive elections. This was the core of Ireton’s political beliefs, and the basic rationale of parliamentarianism. It had all been clearly flagged up by William Pierrepont at the very beginning of the dispute, in July 1641. Pierrepont had indeed identified the conceptual root from which the formula took its force – the “unlimited power” of legislative sovereignty, which could only derive from “common consent”. This idea, together with the perception that the legislative process was now essential to the good governance of the realm, meant that parliament had become “the main foundation”. And thus it could assume an independent existence, and a residual sovereignty in the state. Ireton, while rejecting the Levellers’ suggestion that the king should be effectively excluded from the legislative process, had nevertheless recognised that the logic of parliament’s definitive role in that process, and the authority that went with it, meant that the king ought not to deny any laws they offered, and if he did, then “they were laws without 237

238


him”. This sequence of thought illustrates precisely how the idea of parliament’s political supremacy had been born out of the concept of sovereign representative legislation. The development emerged most plainly of all from a rather less expected and less eminent quarter, and indeed a more obscure kind of source – the notebooks of Walter Yonge. Like Ireton, Yonge was still among the mainstream of parliamentarians who were not yet ready to accept the outright levelling of society on the basis of natural freedom. Yonge had therefore to address the problem that whatever the thrust of parliament’s legislative authority, it had no constitutional right to proceed to the making of law, or anything else, without the king. It was a question with which he became closely concerned, and he answered it in much the same way as Ireton did. Yonge’s commitment to the process of parliamentary law-making is one of the least known aspects of his career, though it has already been referred to in passing at various points above. It may help to clarify his position if we gather the threads of his interest together now. His diary displays a concern with the progress of bills through the Commons right from the beginning in 1606 to 1609. In fact, he was receiving news of this from his neighbours John Drake and William Pole, though neither were MPs at the time.1 There already seems to have been quite an extended network for the dissemination of parliamentary news and the assessment of legislative activity in early seventeenth-century Devon. But it was probably from the 1620s that Yonge’s active technical interest in parliamentary law took shape. In July 1622, he became a JP for Devon, and it was no doubt in connection with this that he began to compile his handbook or manual to a JP’s work.2 This consisted of a comprehensive catalogue of the statutes governing the wide variety of offences which now came under the JPs’ jurisdiction. It noted the levels of evidence stipulated for each offence and the penalties prescribed. The collection was obviously regarded as a very useful exercise, since a parliamentary committee ordered it to be printed for general use in 1642. It was also in the 1620s that Yonge began to show an interest in the political significance of law-making, in his diary. He was still not yet an MP himself, but he now seems to have been receiving information from those who were, like his relative and neighbour William Strode.3 And like the MPs who have been discussed in the foregoing pages, Yonge was already looking at parliamentary legislation not as an isolated or occasional phenomenon, but as an ongoing programme to serve a continuous need. In fact he provided a reminder of another reason why it was becoming more and more crucial for parliament to be allowed

The Sovereignty of Parliament

239

sufficient scope to complete and maintain its legislative activities. In 1622 he noted that “the last parliament there were 70 laws which stood upon discontinuance expired for that the parliament broke up in sudden discontent”.4 These were laws passed for a period only, which needed to be renewed, and they were of specific relevance to Yonge’s work as a JP, bearing on issues affecting the poor, theft, and rogues and vagabonds. It was clearly important to him that the state of the law in these areas should be clear to all concerned and known to be properly in force. It was a good illustration of how the day-to-day functioning of society and economy was coming to depend on the continuous service (and servicing) of parliamentary law. That Yonge saw it in this light is made clear in another entry in his diary in 1624. In that year, unusually, parliament was allowed the scope to complete a programme of legislation. Nevertheless, Yonge was aggrieved that the Lords had made no contribution to this. “In this parliament there was not one public bill sent to the lower House by them. See what care they have for the commonwealth, who were wont to be the chief statesmen and should be the pillars of the commonwealth.”5 As already suggested, this was a good indication of how the perception of parliamentary legislation as an ongoing public necessity could come to entail a concept of government and a criticism of the royal establishment, both for obstructing it and, even more tellingly, for not contributing to it. The complaint against the Lords was indeed an implied criticism of the king, for it was from the direction of the Upper House that government legislation would normally be expected to emerge. Perhaps the most striking aspect of this is the fact that Yonge could take such an interest in the legislative process and develop such a high estimation of its importance, at such a geographical distance from Westminster. It seemed to demonstrate the national force of representative law. From 1629 to 1640, of course, there was no opportunity for parliament to legislate at all. In December 1640, Yonge was elected as an MP for the first time for the newly restored borough of Honiton, in which he owned part of a manor. His purely parliamentary diaries do not start until the war itself; and although a useful record of proceedings in the House, they are of limited use in further elucidating his own views. Nor do the other records of the early years of the Long Parliament feature Yonge very greatly. There are however clear indications that he was a valued recruit to the radical element in the parliamentary leadership. He was named to the committee for the Triennial Act, which is rather surprising since he was so newly arrived in the Commons. It is worth remembering that his friend, neighbour and relative William Strode was

240


centrally involved with this, as with most of the other radical initiatives in the House. It also seems that Yonge supported early moves to exert an influence over the king’s choice of ministers. In December 1641 he made the “startling suggestion” that in the bill of tonnage and poundage they should insist that Sir Henry Vane the Younger be continued as treasurer of the navy, against the wishes of the king.6 It is another indication of the variety of ways in which this particular aspect of parliamentarian ambition could emerge. Yonge had a special interest in naval affairs, and in fact he held office as victualler of the navy during the Civil War. But it is from a rather different and more oblique source that we discover the full scope of Yonge’s radical parliamentarianism, both in relation to the choice of ministers and many other matters. During the Long Parliament, he put together another catalogue of statutes – a notebook of parliamentary precedents.7 The compilation has various dates attached to it, between 1644 and 1647. It is of course impossible to tell when it actually began to take shape in Yonge’s mind, or indeed when he began to set it down on paper. But the core of the catalogue as written appears to have been collected by the first date of 1644. It then seems to have been amended and added to in 1646, and one very brief section is specifically dated 1647. The statutes are arranged alphabetically by topic. But they cover very different issues, and form a very different kind of collection to the one he had made for his manual for the guidance of JPs. The purpose of the 1644 collection is directly political. The consistent thrust of the great majority of the statutes cited is to show that parliament held residual authority, or supremacy in the state. It was a very interesting exercise. What Yonge appears to have done is to scour the statute book for anything which could be construed as showing that parliament had acted as the source of authority, or had engaged in independent political action. He began with a series of precedents purporting to show occasions when accounts of the king’s revenue had been rendered to the House of Commons.8 He went on to note precedents showing parliament’s influence or control over ministers and officials.9 He also noted precedents which he believed to show that parliament had dealt with and advised upon all important matters of state.10 But the section which most clearly conveys the implication of these extracts is that which deals with the position of the king. Yonge interpreted the statute book as showing the king to be subordinate to parliament in a wide variety of ways. The king’s power was given to him by parliament; the king had the kingdom in trust and could not dispose


241

of it without the parliament; the king’s style had been altered in parliament; the king had been imprisoned and released by parliament; the king had resigned his power in parliament; the king had been deposed in parliament; the king was no judge in parliament; the king’s judgements were complained of in parliament; the king could not alter the laws; the king’s wronging of his subjects was redressed in parliament; the king in all weighty matters used the advice of parliament; the king was bound to grant what was for the good of the commonwealth.11 In case the thrust of these selections was not sufficiently clear, Yonge added a summarising note regarding the relative powers of king and parliament, and identifying specific points which he thought indicated parliament’s ascendancy. He suggested, for instance, that the fact that the king received his crown in parliament was “an acknowledgment of the parliament’s superiority over him”. Similarly, he thought that the fact that parliament gave the king the power to make ordinances for coin “argues the superiority of power in the parliament”. And the fact that parliament disposed of the king’s officers “denotes a superiority in the parliament”.12 With an impressive degree of application and determination, Yonge had used the records to try to substantiate a view that parliament should be regarded as possessing residual sovereignty in the state. At one level, this is of interest as another illustration of the way that a political consciousness of parliament could be derived simply from the structures and mechanisms through which the institution operated. Yonge did not require a theory of constitutionalism to compose his idea of what the position of parliament should be. In fact, it was not really what the statutes said at all that underpinned his confidence in the assembly. The truly revealing aspect of his trawl of precedents was the authority that the concept of representative law had acquired. Historically, of course, parliament had not really possessed a political “superiority” over the king. The notion reflected parliamentarian ambition rather than constitutional reality. But it was not entirely baseless, for parliament did possess a defining authority over the process of sovereign legislation. In fact it is in the direct application of Yonge’s notes to the theory of statute law that we find the clearest hint of a purpose for the catalogue, something rather more specific than just the general reinforcement of his parliamentarian views. It may not have been a coincidence that on 24 July 1644, Yonge was named to, and given special responsibility for, a small but eminent committee to “consider of such ordinances as are fit to be turned into laws, and of such laws as are fit to be presented to his majesty with the propositions for peace. And the care of this business is

242


especially recommended to Mr. Young”.13 The task would obviously call upon the detailed and constantly updated knowledge of parliament’s enactments which Yonge seems to have possessed. By implication it would also involve the question of the nature of legislative authority. And indeed this was an issue about which his catalogue of precedents naturally had a lot to say. It was very much in line with the rest of his conclusions about the balance of power between king and parliament. In fact, in this respect he was on rather stronger ground – it was not too difficult to construe from the statute book the idea that parliament possessed residual legislative sovereignty. Yonge noted that acts of parliament had been made without the king’s person in parliament; acts made by the king and his council did not bind without the consent of parliament; statutes could not be made without the consent of parliament, or repealed without the consent of parliament; statutes could be made by the Lords and Commons without the king.14 Only the last of these assertions would have been regarded as obviously contentious in the light of existing constitutional orthodoxy. But it was an issue that was becoming more and more pertinent as time passed, and it began to seem as if no agreement with the king, and therefore no consent to parliament’s ordinances, was to be expected. The most interesting thing of all about Yonge’s notebook is that at some stage he began to specifically consider the question of how or whether parliament’s ordinances could be given the full authority of statute, without the participation of the king. It was a question which occupied him in many of the later entries in his notebook. At one level the question was scarcely worth asking, for the answer was plain and simple. The constitutional position was that statutes could not be made without the consent of all the elements of the king-inparliament equation. Therefore the starting point of the discussion, as Yonge was obliged to note, was that there was a difference between an ordinance and a statute: “the ordinance lacks the threefold consent – and is ordained by one or two of them”.15 On a historical basis then, parliament of itself could not make fully-fledged sovereign law at all. But Yonge was not content to leave the argument there. He turned to the logic of the representative function from which legislative sovereignty in England essentially derived, and on which it was possible to construct a different conclusion. Even if we allow, he said, that a parliamentary ordinance does not bind the king, “yet it binds all that are party to it – for the Commons House represents all the Kingdom of the Commons”. He went on, “The King is bound by oath to pass all bills rendered unto him for the good of his people. If the King refuse such an act should


243

it be void?”16 He then cited the Militia Ordinance as an example of a vital public measure which had been passed without the king’s consent, and noted that it had been presumed to have the same binding force as statute law.17 He omitted to mention that this exercise in statutory legislation by other means had started a war. Finally, in a separate entry at the end of his notebook, he rehearsed a few more arguments in favour of the independent statutory power of parliamentary law, in which he seemed to be subverting the traditional idea of the three parts of the legislative process: “Note that the three estates in Parliament are the Lords, the Clergy and the Commons. For the King hath no voice in Parliament – he only assents unto the bills, which of course he must do by his oath.”18 In Yonge’s mind the concept of the legislative sovereignty of the king-in-parliament seemed to have given way to the concept of the legislative sovereignty of parliament-without-the-king. In a sense of course he was perfectly right – the relegation of the monarch had always been implicit in the elevation of the representative principle in statute law. Yonge was simply articulating the confidence in parliament’s centrality to the legislative function which, more than anything else, had brought them to this point. But he was also confronting the problem with which it had left them. It was the same question over which Ireton and the Levellers had grappled. If the essence of legislative sovereignty was the representative capacity of parliament, as it certainly was, then the king was not strictly relevant to it. Yet the requirements of social and constitutional order meant that in practice his participation was unavoidable. The king might no longer be the essence of legislative sovereignty, but he was still essential to it. This conundrum marked both the underlying strength and the eventual limits of the English Revolution. It explained why the parliamentary classes were willing and able to challenge the authority of the monarchy, and also why they were eventually obliged to restore it. One of the crucial things that we can never know is at precisely what point in his life Walter Yonge began to form the notion that parliament was in some sense “superior” to the king. It is always unlikely that we will be able to identify such deep developments with any kind of exactitude. But what we obviously can say is that the idea was implicit in the concept of the supremacy of parliamentary law to which Yonge was committed in so many ways. What the notebook plainly illustrates are the beliefs that underpinned Yonge’s position. It shows the strength and depth of his political parliamentarianism. And once again it indicates the aspects and phases of the transition that was taking place in political psychology. Yonge was not a republican, but he was nevertheless

244


able to conceive of a decisive change in the balance of power between king and parliament. Walter Yonge was not a man who stumbled into civil war in the defence of his Godly religion. Yonge’s interest in the concept of statute, and his commentaries upon it, indicate plainly that his allegiance to parliament was founded on a belief in the practical necessity and moral authority of representative law, and a consequent determination that the representative function should be made a secure part of the governmental process. This was clearly a common perspective embraced by people like Pierrepont, Ireton and Yonge right from the early stages of the dispute. They did not envisage the removal of the king, but they did to some degree and in a quite specific way envisage the establishment of parliament’s supremacy over him. The question in the latter stages of the conflict was how far would that assumption of supremacy be taken. Or to put it another way – how far would it have to be taken to bring the king to heel. The signs were not encouraging. The Heads of the Proposals had been by some distance Charles’s best opportunity. Parliament’s Four Bills, which were put to him at the end of 1647, were considerably more stringent. Episcopacy was simply to be abolished, root and branch. The militia was to be under parliament’s direct control for 20 years, and legislative proposals in that field were to be permanently and explicitly free of the royal veto. One interesting feature of the Four Bills and the Heads of the Proposals is that both demand specific confirmation of the abolition of the Court of Wards, which can thus be seen once again as a central and essential aim of the parliamentarian revolution.19 Charles scarcely bothered to consider the Four Bills. He believed in any case that there were other options available to him. His alliance with the Scots was now settled, and this was a crucial turning point in deciding his fate. In the debate on the Vote of No Addresses, on 3 January 1648, Ireton said that since the king had now plainly broken his contract with the people, they could justifiably proceed to “settle the kingdom without him”. Cromwell too hinted darkly that they might be obliged to reconsider their preference for maintaining the king as part of the polity. Pierrepont shared the widespread mood of exasperation with Charles and also spoke in favour of the motion.20 But, as ever, Charles’s approach was not without its tactical advantages. In the spring of 1648, the most powerful alliance against him began to buckle under the strain, because although the generals might feel able to actually abandon the search for a negotiated settlement, the middle group could not. In fact, by the end of March, the growing


245

manifestations of war weariness and discontent in the counties and the developing threat of a Scottish invasion convinced them that negotiations with the king must be resumed.21 The generals, at the sharper end of the dispute, were tending more and more to the alternative view. On 25 April 1648, enraged by confirmation that a Scots army was about to move on Charles’s behalf, they vowed to bring “that man of blood” to final account. On 28 April, Pierrepont took the opposite tack and voted with the majority in parliament against altering “the fundamental government of the Kingdom by King, Lords and Commons”. David Underdown has produced a finely detailed account of these realignments, and the collapse of the Independent/middle-group alliance. But his tendency to view the resulting division in terms of “social conservatives” versus “Puritan revolutionaries” gives a misleading slant on the main thrust of parliamentarian aims.22 In fact, although the breach with the Army was not to be repaired, Pierrepont had not really diverged from the radical core of the revolution. The 28 April vote is usually taken as illustrating the constitutional conservatism of the Long Parliament, but it can bear a different interpretation. Although government by “King, Lords and Commons” was indeed less radical than the completely kingless version now being envisaged by the republicans and the more extreme views in the Army, it still implied a revolutionary new role for parliament in comparison with the personal monarchy which had held sway before 1640. Cromwell’s defeat of the Scots in August 1648, left Charles without a military option, at least for the moment, and confirmed the New Model Army as the dominant power in the land – which was a mixed blessing for many MPs. The consensus in the Commons was still determined on a settlement. But it was not intended to be a surrender as is sometimes assumed. In the new negotiations at Newport, Pierrepont and the middle group stood firm on the standard parliamentarian demand for an effective degree of supervision over ministers and militia.23 The difference was that on this occasion, on 9 October 1648, Charles pretended to consent.24 This, at least nominally, was a breakthrough, and Pierrepont now resumed his attempt to resolve the principal remaining difficulty by hammering out an accommodation over religion. Some commentators thought that he was combining with Vane to spin out the negotiations and “gain on the King’s party by the offer of a toleration for the Common Prayer and episcopal clergy until the Army could be brought up to London”.25 This assumption was not too surprising in view of Pierrepont’s personal bond with the generals, but it did not reflect his agenda of the moment. As we have seen, the retention of episcopacy was

246


actually something on which Pierrepont and the king might find some real measure of agreement. In fact, Pierrepont stayed on at Newport until the eleventh hour and seemed to move Charles some way towards a church settlement retaining the outline of the old hierarchy, moderated by elements of Presbyterian and parliamentary supervision.26 Pierrepont may indeed have been trying to serve his own preferences as much as those of the king. In the end, the parliamentary commissioners induced Charles to agree to a three-year “trial” for Presbyterianism. In truth he had no intention of being held to anything, as the generals now knew well enough. Cromwell gently reproved Pierrepont as “my wise friend, who thinks that the enthroning the King with Presbytery brings spiritual slavery, but with a moderate episcopacy works a good peace”.27 Parliament was easier to convince. The House thanked Pierrepont for his efforts at Newport, and on 15 October voted that sufficient progress had been made to propose that once the treaty had been finalised, the king could be invited to London in “honour, freedom and safety”. Again, this was not quite the sell-out that it has sometimes been called, not least by the propaganda of the Army, which was preparing to march to the capital on its own account. It is at this juncture that Ireton is usually regarded as having taken over the tiller of the revolution. With Fairfax instinctively disinclined to encourage the Army’s political ambitions, and Cromwell apparently somewhat preoccupied in the north, it is thought to have been Ireton who assumed the principal burden of persuading his fellow officers gathered at St Albans to adopt a Remonstrance, and move against the treaty. There is much truth in this in as far as Ireton was now more than ever the polemicist of the New Model. But beyond that, a great deal of unfounded assumption has arisen, mainly associated with the attempt by some historians to drive a wedge between the positions adopted by Ireton and Cromwell respectively. The latter is pictured somewhat dramatically as “tortured by indecision, deliberately choosing to stay in the north, far from the centre of action”.28 Ireton is cast in the role of Providence, showing Cromwell the way by presenting him with a fait accompli. God was working, it has been said, “through the mouth of Henry Ireton”.29 The picture is very over-drawn, and in some important respects seriously misleading. It is based in part on some fairly loose speculation – logistical theorising about whether the siege of Pontefract was really that important, and how it should have been possible for Cromwell to get to certain places rather quicker than he did. From these surmises the large conclusion is drawn that “he had obviously not made up his mind”.30


247

Historians have created a remarkably precise psychological profile on the supposition of Cromwell’s absence. It probably tells us a good deal more about them than about him. Although it does seem probable that Cromwell was not personally present at St Albans during the period in question, even that is not one hundred per cent certain. There is no specific statement or information to say that he never left Pontefract at any time. And there was certainly regular contact between the two centres of activity. In fact, the plainest statement that we have on the issue suggests that Cromwell did get to St Albans. A contemporary pamphlet thought that he was expected to “come up to St Albans and use means to unite the whole Army against the treaty”.31 And it was later reported that he did indeed do exactly that – “From St Albans it is certified that Cromwell came thither on Wednesday, and on Thursday was present in the General Council of Officers.”32 The report is usually dismissed as hostile or erroneous. Even a supporting second source is regarded as simply “repeating the unfounded rumour”.33 How well founded is the historian’s assumption? It is true that such evidence that we have of attendance at the council at St Albans does not mention Cromwell. But those records are really rather sparse, and there must have been a variety of ways in which Cromwell could exert his influence. In fact when we look at the Mercurius Pragmaticus report in a broader light, in terms of whether it does reflect Cromwell’s real position or opinion on the question, then there are strong reasons to suppose that the pamphlet’s assessment was judicious. Ireton’s principal problem seems to have been the opposition of Fairfax, who found it hard to contemplate the prospect of taking judicial action against the king. At some point this opposition was overcome, and the most obvious counterweight to Fairfax would have been Cromwell. In fact we do know that by 20 November, if not before, Cromwell was taking active steps in this direction. On that day he wrote to Fairfax enclosing some petitions from the northern regiments in favour of the Remonstrance and bringing the king to justice. Cromwell added his own endorsement: “I must confess, I do in all, from my heart, concur with them.”34 This seemed to make it fairly clear where Cromwell stood in relation to the treaty. And it was essentially in the same position as Ireton. W. Abbot’s view that Ireton was Cromwell’s mouthpiece (as opposed to God’s) is rather more plausible than that of some modern historians. Abbot was surely right to say – “there can be little doubt they were in accord”.35 Further proof of this came in a letter that Cromwell wrote on 25 November to Colonel Robert Hammond, who did harbour reservations about Army intervention. In this letter, Cromwell plainly

248


demonstrated his opposition to the treaty, and indeed illustrated the arguments he might have used to persuade doubters. In true revolutionary mode, he said that the safety of the people must be the overriding consideration, whereas by the treaty – “the whole fruit of the war is like to be frustrated, and all most like to return to what it was, and worse”. He suggested that the Army itself was a “lawful power”, because the quarrel had been “lawful in itself”. Perhaps the most important thing of all about this letter is that when Cromwell and Hammond debated the rights and wrongs of withdrawing the obedience owed to legally constituted authority, they were, once again, not talking about the king, they were talking about “the Parliament”.36 They were talking, just as Pierrepont did in 1641, and Ireton did in 1647, about the supreme authority created by representative consent. In other words, this should remind us that in essence the revolution had already happened. Parliament had specifically sought to change the balance of the constitution in its favour, and so far, it had succeeded. It was in this context that Cromwell and Hammond could discuss the question of lawful authority without reference to the king. This, of course, is the perspective that revisionist historians have sought to jettison. The whole effect, not to say the purpose of the distinction drawn between Ireton and Cromwell in 1648, is to conceal that full balance of events. By narrowing the focus, Cromwell can be cast as the constitutionalist, and Ireton as the Puritan radical.37 And the revolution can be confined to the winter of 1648–1649, and presented as the work of a minority of religious extremists. There could be no sadder misrepresentation of the nature of the parliamentarian cause, and the politics of the 1640s. As the letter to Hammond makes clear, Ireton and Cromwell had been engaged in an essentially political revolution, which had begun in November 1640, with the aim of subordinating the discretionary power of the crown. On this they were entirely of one mind. And any differences (if any at all) they had in 1648 were insignificant by comparison. The essential aim of subjecting the monarchy to the representative principle was shared by Cromwell, as by many others. But there is no doubt that what we hear in The Remonstrance of the Army in November 1648 is Ireton’s voice. One source indeed referred to it as “Ireton’s Petition”.38 So what rationale did he offer for the Army’s decisive intervention in the politics of the nation? He claimed in essence that it was not the Army that was threatening to subvert the parliamentarian cause, but parliament itself. He reproved the Houses for reneging on the Vote of No Addresses, which he implied had been passed more at the behest of


249

the politicians than the generals.39 And most interestingly, he suggested that “all men understood [this] to imply some further intentions of proceeding in justice against him and settling the kingdom without him”.40 This was also a sign that Ireton’s notion of justice against the king was not necessarily capital. But the Houses had failed to stand by their word. They had not only resumed negotiations, but had abandoned their usual precautions by agreeing to a “personal treaty” without first insisting on firm conditions and controls upon the king.41 Ireton said that if “when affairs stood in some equal balance” an agreement had been made “upon a full provision for the matters in question and good security for the future against him it might have been excusable in point of prudence”. But this was true no longer. He pointed out that Charles was attempting to maintain his military options, even while purporting to negotiate. It was a usual ploy for princes, “when they could not prevail in the way of force, to leave that and apply themselves by fraud to accomplish their ends and wills upon the people to make some feigned yielding up to those prerogatives and advantages they find they cannot hold get themselves into the throne again: and upon their next advantage break and make void all again”. For parliament to risk all on such an agreement was “a preposterous and self-defeating way”.42 This was much the same danger that Cromwell described in his letter to Hammond. The generals believed that the treaty would inevitably be self-defeating for two main reasons. The first was their conviction of the incorrigible duplicity of the king, who they now regarded as incapable of accommodating himself to the public interest. And once you accepted that the latter was to be defined by parliament, they were probably correct. Secondly, as military tacticians, they were very aware of the unfavourable logistics that now obtained on the ground in the capital. There, the Lords, the Peace Party, the Presbyterians and the “City Malignants” were firmly in the ascendant and well capable of demonstrating it in force. In Ireton’s summary – if the king were to be admitted to a personal treaty, “especially in London the evil and danger thereof had been so visible, as nothing need to have been said to unfold it”.43 In other words, Charles would have been reacclaimed as monarch, all conditions upon him would have become irrelevant, and he would have plucked victory from the jaws of defeat. Ireton was obviously determined that this should not be allowed to happen. But how far could he still justify his claim to be working within the mainstream of the parliamentarian movement? Essentially, what had changed in the Remonstrance was that the claim to parliamentary

250


sovereignty, which had been implicit since 1641, was now categorically spelled out. If one passage encapsulates the intention of the document, it is the assertion that this question should no longer be left in doubt. For the state could not be properly settled, said Ireton, “if all matters of power, trust and right are not fully cleared and determined so as to state the supreme trust, and conclusive judgement to all intents and purposes fully and absolutely in one party”.44 Nevertheless, this was clearly still the same “supreme authority” and “great and supreme trust”, with the “power of final judgement”, that he had already claimed for the House of Commons almost eighteen months previously in the Representation of the Army, and then at Putney. This was indeed what they had always been fighting for. To Ireton then, the Army had assumed the responsibility of saving, and in the process completing the parliamentarian cause. And this was far from an unfounded claim. In a revealing passage, he referred himself back to the 1620s, very much in the manner of an earlier and even grander Remonstrance penned by one John Pym. Ireton recalled the genesis of the demand for guaranteed and regular assemblies as a response to the fact that “all his reign” Charles had resisted the expression of the public interest by refusing to call parliaments, preferring “that there might be no such common council to restrain or check him, and that all these matters of supreme trust might rest in him and his breast alone”.45 Charles might reasonably have pointed out that this had always been more or less the position, up until 1641. But for Ireton, and many others, it had clearly become unacceptable. What was his proposal for finally settling things on a different basis now? The “chief subject of our contest”, he said, had been “the sum of the public interest of a nation in relation to common right and freedom”. And this rested on two main principles: 1. That for all matters of supreme trust or concernment to the safety and welfare of the whole, they have a common and supreme council of Parliament: and that (as to the common behalf, who cannot all meet together themselves) to consist of deputies and representers freely chosen by them 2. That the power of making laws, constitutions and officers may rest in that supreme council.46 The basic formula could, once again, easily have been mistaken for that set out by Pierrepont in the summer of 1641 – in which parliament was seen as the “main foundation”, on the strength of the “unlimited power”


251

that could only come from “common consent” (with the echoing phrase that because “all cannot conveniently meet, instructeth them to give their consents to some they know”). In fact it is clear that Ireton’s “supreme council of parliament” was already entailed in Pierrepont’s attribution of sovereignty to the representative principle and Walter Yonge’s confident assertion of parliamentary “superiority”. And, of course, the “power of making laws, constitutions and officers” was not at all unrecognisable from the kind of authority that the Long Parliament had assumed and exercised almost from the beginning. But there was one crucial difference, was there not? When, in February 1641, John Pym had hailed the Triennial Act as the basis of good government for the future, he had at least still been thinking of it as the king’s government. In Ireton’s scheme of things, kings no longer seemed to figure much at all. Or did they? The emphasis of modern historiography might lead us to suppose that the Remonstrance was a republican manifesto. This was actually far from the truth. Certainly, the provisions for parliamentary monitoring of affairs were now to be considerably tighter than in the context of the Triennial Act, but the office of monarch was by no means excluded from the picture. The power exercised by “that supreme council, and the representative body of the people therein, their proceedings and deliberations may be binding to the people and to all officers and ministers of state whatever, and it may not be left in the will of the King, or any particular person to oppose, make void, or render ineffectual such their deliberations and proceedings”.47 So there might still be a king. Though it was true that the limitations upon him were now to be such that some might feel that the essence of monarchical authority had indeed been removed. There is a lengthy discussion of whether Charles himself might be cleared of the charge of inveterate opposition to the public interest and reinstated as a suitable candidate for the post of monarch. Or whether, as Ireton seems to have preferred, he should be subject to exemplary justice of one kind or another, presumably disqualifying him from the position.48 But in that case, the way is left open for his sons to take up office, if they are prepared to accept the new conditions of the job. Even now, Ireton was still working within the parameters of what the revolution had always been – an attempt to establish the pre-eminence of the representative principle, without dispensing with the monarchy altogether. With “Ireton’s Petition” weighing heavy in the ears of MPs, the New Model Army marched with steady deliberation towards London. Both Ireton and Cromwell originally favoured the option of obliging the

252


House of Commons to dissolve, and triggering new elections.49 This showed scant respect for the dignity of the self-perpetuated assembly, but it did demonstrate a striking confidence in the degree to which the electorate supported the radical thrust of the parliamentarian movement. More pragmatic heads, like Edmund Ludlow, recognised that much water had now flowed under the bridge and this might have clouded that original vision in the public mind. They preferred not to take the chance, and recommended instead a purge of disaffected members, which would leave a core of the Long Parliament on which they knew they could rely. This was the course eventually adopted. It is interesting to note that William Pierrepont was not among the MPs excluded by Prides Purge when the Army arrived at Westminster at the beginning of December 1648. It is clear that the generals would dearly have liked to think that they retained his sympathy. But there is no doubt that he strongly disapproved of the invasion of parliamentary liberties, and this determined his position on the issue. He chaired a committee to try to negotiate the release of the arrested MPs. Thereafter he absented himself from the House. It was said that he “expressed much dissatisfaction” at the proceedings of the Army and at those MPs who continued to sit.50 But it was perhaps as much in sorrow as anger. And even as the Army prepared to launch the final, lethal assault on the old constitution, he did not entirely break with them. The new regime thought it worth their while to nominally include him in the High Court of Justice which was to try the king, and he continued to discuss these affairs with friends like Bulstrode Whitelocke who were actively cooperating with the generals.51 And what of Walter Yonge? His notebooks tell us that he was quite happy to embrace the notion of parliamentary supremacy. But it is not clear whether he would have regarded the intervention of the Army as guaranteeing or undermining that principle. His precise reaction to the Purge is not recorded. But we do know that he was not named on the list of secluded MPs, and he continued to serve as victualler of the navy into 1649.52 On 3 January 1649, the purged House of Commons moved to set up the High Court of Justice for the trial of the king. As a corollary of this, on 4 January, the House declared itself to be the sovereign power in the state. That the people are, under God, the original of all just power: that the Commons of England, in Parliament assembled, being chosen by and representing the people, have the supreme power in this nation; that whatsoever is enacted or declared for law by the Commons in


253

Parliament assembled, hath the force of law, and all the people of this nation are concluded thereby, although the consent and concurrence of the King or House of Peers be not had thereunto.53 Gardiner thought that this sounded “strangely democratic, as proceeding from so unrepresentative a body”.54 He was correct that it calls for a special explanation, but he was underestimating the degree to which the Army and the remnants of the Long Parliament were upholding the original aims and principles of the parliamentarian revolution. In fact it is notable how the terminology of the Commons’ declaration appears to echo so many of the pivotal statements and concepts that have provided the central threads of this study. Even back to the basic formula outlined by Sir Thomas Smith that “The most high and absolute power of the realm of England is in the parliament that is the Princes and the whole realm’s deed and what is done by this consent is taken as law”.55 Through in the summer of 1641 to William Pierrepont’s notion of the “unlimited power” of law-making, that could only derive from “common consent”.56 On to Walter Yonge, in the mid-1640s, developing the idea of the “superiority of parliament”, and suggesting that because the Commons represented and bound the whole kingdom, therefore its acts could be taken as sovereign law, even without the king.57 Then to Ireton at Putney, hailing parliament as “the supreme authority of the kingdom”, and asserting that they had been fighting so that the people “should not be concluded [but] by the Representative”; and even earlier, in June 1647, identifying the “great and supreme trust” that rested with the House of Commons.58 It was true of course that the Long Parliament was now reduced to a tiny minority, compared with the virtual unanimity of the winter of 1640–1641. But the underlying aim of the revolution was still the same – that is to establish the pre-eminence of the representative principle, without destroying the office of monarch. Both Ireton and Cromwell seem to have attempted to some degree to resist the pressure from more extreme elements in the Army for the king to be disposed of forthwith.59 There was also talk of sustaining the monarchy in other hands, such as the Duke of Gloucester – a proposal which would certainly have fitted in with Ireton’s train of thought in the Remonstrance. This solution was apparently being advocated by some of those MPs who had “forborne sitting in the House since the force committed”.60 And we may well imagine that William Pierrepont would probably have been included in that number.

254


The trial could not now be avoided, even if the generals had wished it. But there are further indications that Ireton did not necessarily envisage the judicial process as concluding in the king’s death. At the turn of the year, when the Army Council questioned the prophetess Elizabeth Poole, Ireton was at pains to establish that her visions had only warned against the execution of the king, not against the trial as such.61 So they came to the final act in the tragedy of Charles I. Revisionists would like to restrict the revolution to that act alone, and characterise it as carried out by a “tiny clique” of extremists spurred on mainly by religious zeal and the dictates of “Providence”, and justifying themselves on the Old Testament notion of “blood guilt”.62 A more balanced perspective has recently been reasserted by Sean Kelsey. While still tending to talk of the revolution as encompassed in this event, he corrects the impression that it was little more than a biblically fuelled bloodletting. He makes a persuasive case for the supposition that the majority of the king’s judges would, like Ireton, “far rather have saved him than sentenced him to death”.63 The strongest desire of the court was to subject the king to their authority – but they wished to do this for the purposes of retaining him as part of a settlement, negotiations for which had not really ceased.64 There were divisions within the court of justice, but they were essentially political. There were the “oligarchs”, who would have accepted something not far removed from the old constitution, if it had enabled them to avoid executing Charles. And there were the “democrats”, who sought to construct a genuine parliamentary sovereignty, but were still reluctant to destroy Charles and the monarchy in the process.65 This is certainly a good general indication of what was at issue between Charles and parliamentarianism. But it is probably wrong in supposing that there was much willingness to go back to the old constitution as such, and it thus overestimates the range of Charles’s options. By the same token, it underestimates the degree of continuity and solidarity behind the concept of parliamentary sovereignty.66 A good illustration of the underlying force of this came on 23 January, when in response to the king’s refusal to plead, Lord President Bradshaw told Charles that it was not for him “nor any other man to dispute the jurisdiction of the supreme and highest authority of England, from whom there is no appeal, and touching which there is no dispute”.67 He was not so much asserting the power of the court as enunciating the real and solid basis on which the notion of parliament’s supremacy was built – that is the concept of sovereign representative law. And when Charles, quite understandably, refused to accept their jurisdiction, he was in


255

essence rejecting the extension of legislative sovereignty into political sovereignty on which the English Revolution had been predicated. At the trial then, the central purpose of parliamentarianism remained what it had always been – to exert a controlling influence over the monarchy, without destroying it. That intention was already in place in the winter of 1640–1641. And once the concept of the personal monarch as sole initiator of the political process and determinant of the public interest was undermined, there emerged at almost every stage the difficulty of knowing exactly what to do with the king. It was unlikely that any self-respecting personal monarch would willingly accept this limitation of his role – certainly not Charles I. And his repeated refusal to acknowledge their right to judge him could in a sense be taken as a conclusive demonstration of this, both practical and philosophical. It is very probable that majority opinion in the court of justice would have preferred to find a way to avoid executing the king. Nevertheless, it can be seen that the necessity to do so was a logical consequence of the mainstream parliamentarian aim of subordinating the power of the crown, in a manner that Charles could not concede. It was apparently when Cromwell’s patience finally ran out that the king’s fate was sealed. It seemed that there was nothing else they could do with him. Ireton’s position is a perfect illustration of the ongoing problem of what to do with the king. Ireton believed that in 1640 – “the danger we stood in was that one man’s will must be a law”. And the Civil War had thus been fought for the right “not to be concluded [but] by the Representative”.68 The aim was essentially to make government subject to regular parliamentary supervision. Through 1647, Ireton struggled to find a way of securing that parliamentarian ambition, while still retaining a substantial place for the king in the working of the polity. By 1648 he had become convinced that Charles could never be made amenable to the concept. Or, as he was quoted as saying, “we found he had no intention to the people’s good but to regain by art what he had lost in fight”.69 The proposition that Charles could be required to conform to an independently defined notion of the public interest was a measure of the conceptual divergence that was so hard to resolve. So, by the end of 1648, Ireton believed that parliamentary sovereignty must now be unambiguously established, and the position of monarch was reduced to something of an afterthought, left open in case some other member of the royal house might accept the conditions imposed. Charles himself would have to be brought to some kind of justice, but Ireton still hoped that they might find a solution that did not involve his death.

256


We do not know William Pierrepont’s specific opinion of the trial. If he was indeed invited to participate in the High Court of Justice, he certainly did not take up the suggestion. Yet the fact that this could even be considered confirms that his preferred view of the power of the crown and the nature of the struggle was not essentially different from Ireton’s. In effect, the choice of both was for a constitutional monarchy. If Pierrepont was not entirely lacking in sympathy with the generals in their present situation, it was perhaps because he had direct experience of years of fruitless negotiations, and was not without an understanding of the difficulty of subjecting Charles to this concept. And even the dramatic denouement did not, apparently, provoke Pierrepont into immediately severing all connection with the revolution. It seems that he was still signing warrants for the Army Committee in March 1649, a month after absented MPs were supposed to be disqualified from such duties, and two months after the king’s execution.70

10 Epilogue: “A Parliamentary Man”

This volume has made a long journey, geographically, socially and politically – from the almshouse people of Totnes, and the “simple handicrafts men” of Minehead, to the parliamentary aristocracy of Sherwood, and the execution of the king. These connections are not facile. The authority derived from the consent of “everyone” was at the heart of the concept of sovereign legislation as it developed in the sixteenth century. And the paradoxical link that was established between sovereignty and representation always contained a potential threat to the power of the crown. The concept created both the material motive and the philosophical means for such a challenge. The reputation of the representative grew on the strength of its new moral and constitutional authority, and a vital dimension of practical usefulness. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, people were increasingly emphasising the position of parliament as a bulwark against any kind of “arbitrary” money raising. And MPs could condemn discretionary taxation on the novel basis that the king was only “absolute” within parliament. Resistance to impositions and monopolies became part of a general discontent with administration by “patent”. As an alternative, parliament’s legislative service played a central, defining role. Statute law had a distinctive dual force. It was responsive to local needs, and could meet them with definitive national judgements. Its force was further consolidated because an understanding of the principles was built into the concept. The localities made their legislative initiatives in the full knowledge of what it was that underpinned the unique power of statutory provision. They gave the authority of their elective consent, and knew that in return they might hope for the practical benefit of indisputable sovereign legislation. 257

258


During the first three decades of the seventeenth century, it became apparent that the public regard and demand for the provision of legislation had reached a level where it was seen as an indispensable aspect of public administration. Thus, in the 1620s the issue was not simply about the strength of parliament’s ambition to influence foreign affairs or control discretionary power, it was also about a new expectation of government. This is the best measure of the value that was now placed on parliamentary services. As John Pym was to phrase it, the power of legislation, which could only be used in parliaments, was now defined as “that which makes and constitutes a kingdom”. The failure of the crown to recognise this need, or to allow parliament the scope to fulfil it, was the principal reason that MPs assembled in 1640 with the central priority of passing a measure to ensure that the representative function could never be excluded from the governmental process again. To this end they were prepared to rebalance the constitution by removing the king’s discretion over the meeting of parliament. They also believed that guaranteed, regular assemblies would serve to keep the conduct of ministers within the area of parliamentary approval. In short, they wished to make the government subject to the permanent, supervisory influence of the representative. And if these aims quickly developed into an assertion of political sovereignty, that too was entailed in the derivation of “unlimited power” from “common consent” as enunciated by William Pierrepont, at the very beginning of the contest. On this basis, by 1647, men like Walter Yonge and Henry Ireton could freely embrace parliament as “the supreme authority of the kingdom”. Both Yonge and Ireton died in the early years of the Interregnum period. But Pierrepont survived, and as before, gives us a point of balance by which to judge the second decade of the revolution, in relation to some of the themes outlined above. Pierrepont had played an important part in the Independent Alliance which had created the New Model Army and fought the Civil War to a conclusion. He had remained a close ally of the Independent generals against the Peace Party through to 1648. But he greatly deplored Pride’s Purge as an invasion of parliamentary liberties. Like most of the middle-group leaders, he did not return to the Rump Parliament. He was eventually “voted out” in January 1651. But despite the drastic course that the revolution had taken by this juncture, he had still not finally abandoned it. Cromwell remained sufficiently admissible in Pierrepont’s life to stay at his house at Thoresby en route to defeat the Scots, once more, at Worcester in 1651.1 We can fairly assume that in the continuing issue between his old parliamentarian colleague and the Stuart clan, Pierrepont was still essentially in the former camp.

Epilogue: “A Parliamentary Man” 259

Perhaps by this time he had already come round to Cromwell’s view that the Stuarts were not to be negotiated with, or reconciled to a constitutional view of monarchy. This certainly emerged as Pierrepont’s position as the 1650s progressed, but it is impossible to know exactly when and why that conclusion was reached. When Cromwell returned to London to reassume political command, he made a renewed effort to reconcile the old middle-group leaders to his government. He was not entirely unsuccessful. The group continued to consult closely together and were linked to the centre of affairs at Westminster through the figure of Solicitor-General St John.2 Pierrepont may have hesitated to resume political activity, but his friendship with St John ensured that he was never entirely cut adrift.3 It was not too long before his collaboration with Cromwell was also re-established. He became part of the general’s intimate social circle, and made his political advice available on an informal but regular basis. In 1655 when Edward Nicholas asked the identities of Cromwell’s chief councillors, he was told that St John, Fiennes and John Thurloe formed an inner cabinet, and Pierrepont, “a Parliamentary man with crooked shoulders, is admitted when advice is wanting”.4 It is clear that, despite holding no formal position as Cromwell would have wished, Pierrepont was, as Whitelocke said, one of the handful of trusted advisors whose “counsel was accepted and followed by him in most of his greatest affairs”.5 It is probable that he was instrumental in persuading the Protector to phase out the Decimation Tax;6 and at the beginning of 1657 he and St John were in regular consultation with Cromwell about the possibility of the latter becoming king.7 It is typical of Pierrepont’s stance that he gave his advice about the composition of the Protectoral House of Lords, but declined to take a place in that assembly himself.8 It was a delicate balancing act. Pierrepont seemed to wish to distance himself from the regime in an official or theoretical sense, but in practice remained close to its heart. He obviously deplored the fact of Army rule, and the abolition of the monarchy. But he retained a basic sympathy with Cromwell and the principles that they had once, and perhaps even now, held in common. In particular, his view of the position of the monarchy was an essentially pragmatic one. The office was a necessary social and political focus. But it was not essential that it be revived in the hereditary line. On the contrary, now that the Stuarts had gone, it might actually be easier to set up the kind of monarchy that Pierrepont had in mind. He and Cromwell had from the very beginning been close friends and colleagues in the parliamentarian project, and a Cromwellian monarchy might reasonably be expected to deliver the original

260


aim of that cause – a form of government that in some sense referred itself to the preferences and priorities of the parliamentary classes. In other words, Cromwell could be assumed to have a natural disposition towards a constitutional concept of the monarch’s role. And in fact he had shown clear signs of wanting to maintain that ideal. In the principles laid down for his protectorate in 1654, he committed himself to government by a single person and parliaments.9 Even if that were to prove too optimistic an expectation overall, Cromwell had already shown himself an enthusiastic promoter of some of the most important public interests that had begun to define themselves in earlier parliaments. His success in advancing national ambitions in the military and commercial fields made his rule more acceptable to many elements in English society that might otherwise have been unsympathetic. And Pierrepont specifically shared some of his objectives, like the resettlement of Ireland under English control. The recent attempt to suggest that in the late 1640s there were alternative English approaches to Ireland, the mild and the harsh, is not wholly convincing: these apparent distinctions perhaps related largely to the contingencies of English politics.10 But Pierrepont certainly represented the most uncompromising line on the question. In a treatise dating from this time, he offered an extended justification of the English “right” to rule in Ireland.11 He argued essentially that the English had always provided the only orderly, civilising, unified government there.12 He obviously favoured straightforward conquest and colonisation, of the sort which soon came to be personified by Cromwell.13 This kind of perspective was an unpalatable but natural part of the English Revolution. At the end of May 1658, Pierrepont travelled in the official coach with Oliver and Richard Cromwell to attend the launch of a new ship, the “Richard”.14 The powerful vessel marked the high point of Cromwellian foreign policy, the establishment of English supremacy at sea as a preliminary to the decisive victory over Spain at Dunkirk. “Elizabeth’s course” had finally been re-established. The occasion of the ship launch was also symbolic of the central role that Pierrepont was to play in trying to keep the real Richard afloat politically after his father’s death. Pierrepont’s presence as a trusted friend of the family was indeed probably a sign that this commitment had already been made. Although Pierrepont still avoided formal office, he was part of a triumvirate with St John and Thurloe, which managed the government during Richard Cromwell’s brief reign. Richard for his part was “ready to embrace the counsels of his father’s old friends, the two best of whom (were) Mr. Pierrepont and Solicitor General St. John”.15 They were


proposing ways to “reconcile many disputes”, and especially a scheme to resolve the problem of debt and reduce the burden of the Army. Some thought that these “two wary statesmen” found Richard easier to deal with personally than his unpredictable father, “whose temper so differed from theirs that it was usually averse to the deliberate caution they advised, running hazards they trembled to think of”.16 But it was principally Richard’s relative independence of the Army that made Pierrepont hopeful of “bringing the nation into freedom under that young man”.17 He debated the issue at length with his parliamentarian neighbour John Hutchinson. The latter (who in this case was probably wiser than William himself) pointed out that if the state was to be settled in a single person and the Army “taken off”, it was inevitable that the Stuarts would return. Pierrepont tried to reassure him that the political nation would never countenance a restoration because they knew it would be “the ruin of the people’s liberty”.18 This certainly underlined his own view that “the people” believed in their liberty, and that the Stuarts were inimical to it. But whether that belief was still sufficiently high among the nation’s priorities was another question. In the event, Richard’s government proved unable to bring the Army under control. And when he fell from power, making a restoration the more likely solution, Pierrepont also retired into the background. At the end of February 1660, however, with the return of the excluded MPs to the Commons and his own election at the top of the list for the new Council of State, he saw another opportunity to influence affairs. He was apparently still prepared to do all he could to resist or restrict the restored monarchy. Clarendon noted that it would be very desirable to reconcile him to the king’s cause, but also that he had “never shown the least inclination to it”.19 Other Royalists feared that he was trying to engineer the return of Richard Cromwell, or “any single person save the Stuart line”.20 He was said to be “impertinently violent against the King”,21 and conspiring with other parliamentarian leaders to ensure that Charles would at least be held to the terms of the treaty of Newport, and “be so fettered as he should not write a letter but they must know of it”.22 True to form, they demanded that all places of trust should be disposed of by parliament. For a while it seemed that the parliamentarians might be able to impose such a settlement, but they were foiled when General Monck declared for a new assembly, which would inevitably be more chastened and less radical. It was then said that Pierrepont and his fellows were trying to persuade Monck himself to accept the sovereignty. Anyone indeed, “save the Stuart line”.

262


The fact that Pierrepont clearly believed that there should be an individual, monarchical head of state, and yet seemed absolutely determined that it should not be the obvious candidate, Charles Stuart, seems to underline the “limited” concept of monarchy that he held. It may be said, of course, that Pierrepont had a lot to fear personally from a restoration. But in fact he was not beyond redemption from a Royalist point of view. It was only his ultimate decision to prop up Richard Cromwell that might have put him in serious danger of royal retribution. And indeed, as Clarendon recognised, he was in quite a good position to make himself a powerful friend of Charles, if he had so desired. In truth it seems that Pierrepont believed that the nation as a whole had a lot to lose politically from the return of the Stuarts. Everything about his career indicated that his preferred option was for a monarchy which was in some sense accountable to parliament. And perhaps for reasons not dissimilar to those of Ireton and Cromwell in 1648, he had concluded that the return of a Charles Stuart to London was extremely unlikely to produce such a monarchy. Pierrepont was elected to the Convention Parliament for Nottinghamshire. But there was little he could do now to prevent an unconditional restoration. He tried to intercede for some of the republicans, gaining at least a stay of execution for Hutchinson and Vane. He himself received a general pardon,23 and was probably saved from a different fate by Lucy Hutchinson’s steadfast refusal to inform about his championing of Richard Cromwell.24 Pierrepont was defeated in the elections for the Cavalier Parliament in1661, and again retired from politics. In his absence, the original base line, and now the last line of defence of parliamentarianism, came under attack. Once the king was restored, he naturally sought to reverse the autonomous provisions of the Triennial Act, and to reinstate the monarch’s discretion over the calling of parliaments. But even in the relatively pro-monarchical atmosphere of the Cavalier assembly, this did not prove easy. The first attempt to repeal the act in 1663 failed to get through. The Crown eventually achieved its purpose in the following year, but only by rushing through an amendment to the act at the beginning of the session, before enough independent and opposition MPs had arrived at Westminster to defeat the move.25 Thus, somewhat against the run of play, the first, core provision of the parliamentarian revolution had been overturned. But in a sense the episode also showed that some of the foundations of the movement remained in place – for it was significant that the Triennial Act could only be negated by parliament itself. In other words, that defining share in legislative


sovereignty that had done more than anything else to facilitate the revolution, had not gone away. It had survived as the irremovable basis on which parliament’s political sovereignty would, ere long, become established. The same could be said of parliament’s other principal strength, the power of the purse. In fact, it was in this area that William Pierrepont was able to make one more important contribution to the Good Old Cause. In December 1667 he took part in what was described as the one great success of “those who opposed the Court”. Parliament recruited him for the Brook House committee to “examine the accounts of the money that was given in the Dutch war”.26 The king was not happy that his expenditure should be subjected to this kind of scrutiny, and tried to halt the work of the committee. But parliament insisted that it should proceed, and it duly discovered widespread corruption and incompetence. Pierrepont died not long afterwards, and thus did not survive to see how this kind of challenge to the crown would work itself out in the future of the polity. In the 1670s, the Commons became even less inclined to trust the king with money, and Charles (and his brother and successor James) began to pursue private, or secret, foreign policies, aimed partly at achieving financial independence of parliament.27 The impasse represented a structural flaw in the working of the state, which, as in the 1620s, prevented the development of a coordinated and broadly accepted national policy. In 1688 there was another revolution, by which James II was replaced, and the tension was effectively resolved. By the 1690s the demands of war against France necessitated an extended parliamentary session every year, effectively establishing the pattern of an automatic parliamentary presence as first mooted by Pierrepont and his colleagues in 1640. This study has suggested that the process by which parliament came into a position where its presence and influence could not be evaded was far from just an accident. It was the natural result of the underlying preference of the nation, and the developing belief in the importance, both practical and philosophical, of the representative concept. During the seventeenth century, the English people were making a great and difficult journey of their own – they were moving away from the world of personal monarchy towards a polity where parliament had a permanent place at the centre of affairs and held residual sovereignty in the state. They were taking a decisive and conscious step towards the world of independent, communal public authority. That was why William Pierrepont was the true personification of the English Revolution. He opposed

264


the personal monarchy of the Stuarts for the same reason that he opposed the army rule that followed it. He believed, in essence, that government should be based on the legislative capacity of parliament, and should be pursued in accordance with the views of the nation’s representatives. He was above all “a parliamentary man”.

Appendix 1: Thomas Hobbes and the Idea of the Representative

Thomas Hobbes is left to a post-script in this volume because he falls outside its specific geographical remit. He was not directly associated with the particular regions on which the study has focused – though he did spend much of his career just across the Nottinghamshire border, at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, as a tutor and secretary to the family of the Earls of Devonshire. But Hobbes can fairly claim to be universal. His work “Leviathan” has been described as “the greatest, perhaps the sole masterpiece of political philosophy to be written in the English language”.1 Since it was conceived in the 1640s, it could be expected to include ideas relevant to the themes examined in the present volume. In fact Hobbes offers a most telling analysis of the way that changing and contending concepts of representation crucially affected the Civil War struggle. Hobbes was very long lived, and his career as a writer ran from the 1620s to the 1670s – so he was in a position to take full account of the momentous political events of his time. He gave most specific and extensive attention to the causes of the Civil War in “Behemoth”, written towards the end of his career and published posthumously in 1682. It is a very perceptive assessment of the dominant socioeconomic trends of the age, and the contribution that they made to the struggle for sovereignty between crown and parliament. C.B. Macpherson characterised the developments that Hobbes had identified as the growth of “possessive individualism”. To Macpherson, this meant that the “formerly prevailing feudal concept of property” was being supplanted, and a new concept of absolute property had “now grown to the point where it could be held responsible for the Civil War”.2 In this form, the idea was something of an oversimplification, and has often been criticised for referring itself to the model of a grand transition from feudalism to capitalism. But of course that does not necessarily make it wrong. And Macpherson’s view of Hobbes is actually invaluable in highlighting one of the most crucial trends in seventeenth-century history – the consolidation of the right to consent to taxation into an invariable principle. His suggestions have been powerfully reinforced by much of the evidence that has been produced in previous chapters. In fact Hobbes outlined a specific process by which the new spirit of economic independence acquired a political shape. It emerged in the form of a belief that each individual was “ so much master of whatsoever he possessed that it could not be taken away from him upon any pretence of public safety without his own consent”.3 Hobbes suggested that this development was, logically enough, most evident in the context of market towns. And as we have seen, this was very well illustrated in the reaction of the merchants of Dartmouth to the king’s attempt to raise customs dues without parliamentary consent in 1610. Hobbes’s formula also found a precise reflection in the train of thought expressed by William Pierrepont 265

266

Appendix 1

in his speech against Ship Money in 1641. Pierrepont condemned Ship Money because it was unparliamentary. He said that “the countryman followeth the plough” in the belief that his goods could not be taken away from him without his consent, “and in extraordinary causes has that care to choose such for his Knights of the Shire and Burgesses as might be mindful of the cause of payment and his estate”.4 There could not have been a clearer echo of Hobbes’s view. And for the particular purposes of this study we can note that it was parliament’s representative function that connected the economic to the political field in his analysis. Hobbes’s understanding of the Civil War struggle was not entirely retrospective. He seems to a large extent to have predicted parliament’s challenge to the crown. In May 1640, sensing a contest brewing, he rushed through the production of “The Elements of Law”, his first essay in proclaiming the logical necessity of obedience to established authority, which “in its immediate application supported the king against parliament”.5 When the Long Parliament met, and showed its radical determination, Hobbes at once gathered that his fears were being realised, and that he was on the wrong side of current political realities. He decamped to France – “one of the first that fled” – as he conceded. It was thus at a distance that he composed “Leviathan”. It was published when he returned to England in 1651, and perhaps prudently, does not tackle the question of the Civil War head on. The struggle did however form an unavoidable backdrop to the work. In fact, Hobbes confirmed that it was “occasioned by the disorders of the present time”.6 This was the principal incentive behind his attempt to construct a theory of unitary political authority sufficiently convincing to influence a society which he believed was becoming chronically unruly. And it is in fact in a rare passage in “Leviathan”, where he does deal specifically with the circumstances of the dispute, that he produces the most crucial analysis of the differing concepts of representation that he believed to be at issue. In so doing he provides an especially useful insight into the changing constitutional psychology that informed parliament’s challenge to the crown, and which has been touched upon in various ways in the foregoing pages. It says much for the clarity and depth of Hobbes’s vision that he brings the issue to light, for as suggested above, it is not a question that would be expected to emerge in the explicit shape of the kind of constitutional theory or ideology in which historians like to deal. Its importance is to be found in an examination of the relationship between ideas and practice. The concept of representation has various aspects and dimensions. MPs represented their constituencies – that was fairly straightforward. But it was not the only or even the most important manifestation of the form in traditional terms. Who represented the kingdom as such? Who was to be seen as the representative of the community as a whole? This was the area about which some doubt and contention seemed to have arisen by the early seventeenth century. To Hobbes, of course, the king had always been, and still ought to be, regarded as the representative of the kingdom. The monarch acted in that sense as an independent body – and “stood for” his kingdom. This was the real basis on which the king claimed discretionary powers to provide for public safety. The problem, and the disruptive force as Hobbes perceived it, was that this traditional concept of overall representation was no longer really accepted in the kingdom at large – it was being superseded by another:

Appendix 1

267

I know not how this so manifest a truth, should be of late so little observed; that in a monarchy, he that had the sovereignty from a descent of six hundred years, was alone called sovereign, had the title of majesty from every one of his subjects was notwithstanding never considered as their representative; the name without contradiction passing for the title of those men, which at his command were sent up by the people to carry their petitions.7 As already suggested, Hobbes was, somewhat against his will, identifying a crucial moment of transition. The practice of the uniform elected representation of the localities was being consolidated to form a single public perspective. The notion of parliament as the representative of an aggregate of particular interests was coalescing into the notion of parliament as the unitary representative of all. The concept of local representation in the Commons,was, in Hobbes’ view, usurping the king’s function of representing the kingdom as a whole. This is obviously reflected in much of what has been said above of parliament’s readiness to assume the role of judge of the public interest. It is also very compatible with the general acceptance among the political nation of the link between representation and “absolute” sovereignty, and the consequent willingness to deny the king’s discretionary power to provide for public safety. At the same time, it can be seen that this was the point at which that paradoxical association must have appeared most dangerous and unrealistic to an orderly mind such as that of Thomas Hobbes. And “Leviathan” may be characterised in one respect as an understandable attempt to restore the responsibility for public safety into the hands of a unitary “body”. It may be thought a contradiction in Hobbes’s position that he believed that the sovereign power could take the form of an assembly, as well as a monarchy. But in truth it did not really alter the force of the distinction that he was making. He thought that monarchy was certainly the best form of sovereignty because it was easiest for a single person to realise the ideal of one voice speaking for the whole. But the sovereign power could also take the form of an aristocracy (an assembly of some), or a democracy (an assembly of all), as long as the authority was solely with one body or another. It is not entirely surprising that Hobbes was never really embraced by conservative opinion as were the “Divine Right” theories of Robert Filmer. To Hobbes, the optimum shape of political authority was simply that which commanded obedience. What he could not accept was the idea of divided sovereignty. He had observed that parliament’s function of representing the localities had developed to the point where it was taken for, or in Hobbes’s view mistaken for, the sovereign representation of the whole. This was to usurp the sovereignty of the crown and subvert the notion of singular authority, and it had led to the disorders of the Civil War.8 To counter this he devised a formula which recommended the most indivisible version of the representative concept. Once the multitude had decided on the shape of their sovereign “body”, the words and actions of the latter were simply to be taken as their own. “For it is the unity of the representer, not the unity of the represented that maketh the Person one.” Hobbes was specifically denying the status and potential of the parliamentary form of representation. In a sense he was attempting to do precisely the opposite of what the parliamentarian movement had sought to achieve. He was trying to obstruct the promotion of

268

Appendix 1

local electoral representation to a regular, established position and influence in political life. The weight of Hobbes’ theory reflected the scale of the challenge that he believed society had to face. Ironically, the consequences would probably have dismayed him less than he feared. As Macpherson pointed out, Hobbes underrated the stabilising capacity of a dominant and coherent socio-economic force.9 And he underestimated the “unity of the represented”. He seems to have interpreted parliament’s strength in being able to challenge the sovereignty of the crown as an inevitably negative and disruptive factor, when the truth was rather the opposite. Hobbes might have considered his theory vindicated by the balance of political affairs in the second half of the seventeenth century, when the locus of sovereignty remained to some extent undecided, and the kingdom was still to a noticeable degree dysfunctional. But he might have been surprised by the coordinated strength of the British state in the eighteenth century, when the question of sovereignty had effectively been resolved in favour of parliament and “the represented”.

Appendix 2: Dartmouth’s Parliamentary Diary from the Impositions Debate of 16101

[Monday 25 June] Mr Jones2 Sayeth a certain custom must remain in [the matter of impositions], and the king cannot impose but by parliament.3 When at any time the king would lay impositions on his subject’s goods it was complained of in parliament, for if the king might impose what need he call a parliament? Their reason that Mr Recorder made that the king might impose out of [prerogative], which he cannot do.4 The king cannot reserve the merchants’ goods and take money for deposition.5 Every merchant may [freely] pass and re-pass with his goods, paying the ancient custom.6 [And subsequently]7 that none shall meddle with the goods of [merchants].8 [It is claimed that] the king is lord of all the ports and therefore the king may restrain; as if [because] the king had [lordship and liberty of] passing in a highway over any man’s ground, therefore can he restrain any man to [go] through. Admit that the king might restrain all ports [for the good] of the commonwealth, yet can he impose no money for liberty [of passage].9 Better to suffer a mischief for [our prince is not free to impose at discretion like others. But] that it may [be granted] by parliament that it [be done by consent]. Not to accommodate use.10 The merchants may grant but the king gave power.11 But after that all impositions [granted by the merchants] may be void, and so adjudged [by the law]. Magna Carta says that all toll or increase of customs [by prerogative] shall be taken away. Tonnage and poundage granted, which took away all [pretext for] impositions. His conclusion was that the king neither by common law nor by Magna Carta cannot impose but by consent of parliament. The question is whether the king may lay impositions on goods exported and imported in and out of the kingdom without consent of parliament. Sir Francis Bacon He said he would save time and give light. He said he would single the question. That it is not now in question whether the king might alter the law. For parliament and taxes on land.12 But there is great difference [between portorium and tributum].13 The king does not impose dues on merchants [if the carriage be] from port to port. 269

270

Appendix 2

[With] wools, woolpelts and leather [as regards which the king’s hand is bound] there is a difference from all other [commodities, as regards which he is free]. All negatives he taketh in hand are suits.14 It appeareth not in any court of record at Westminster. The king’s prerogative was never called in question. The king’s [acts] may sometimes grieve the subjects though lawful, and sometimes [if] it is unlawful.15 [Thursday 28 June] Mr Hoskins16 [Customs are] an inheritance [of the crown, but] in every man’s knowledge to be made known [by act of parliament].17 Admit that this imposition is in regard of any common benefit [yet it must be granted by the] subjects,18 for no fine may be laid on the tenants but by the [assessors of the] homage.19 The City of London has authority to make certain laws out of [its charter confirmed by parliament] ergo the king without parliament laid imposition [but in fact does not have the same authority].20 [Jeffries case proves that they] may lay impositions on the [parish churches], which is but [Common] law, and [then] they may do it by law.21 The Common Law of England is a common custom, and every branch of the Common Law should prove a custom.22 The universal negative [put by Bacon] is it were [lawful for the king to impose] because never any judges gave any judgement against the king [is invalid] for the judges are tender.23 The merchants are not a corporate body, therefore they can grant no impositions.24 The king said he would abate impositions unto a reasonable [level], ergo he would abate and lay out what he meant [to be] reasonable profit, as major and minor.25 [William Hakewill]26 It was granted that tonnage and poundage was granted by the subjects and that where we [make such a] grant the king should not take away of the subjects [by impositions].27 Which all general.28 Whereas there were divers impositions granted on wool [and] at this day there continues 3d [per librum] on merchandise [of strangers]: so [objected] Mr Solicitor.29 [But this is validated by statute], where it is contained in our charter by our grandfathers and now by us [confirmed]. 3d of the pound [to be paid] of merchandise [brought by foreign merchants].30 So it should if there be wars in any country the king may restrain his merchandise from going out of the realm [to those places. But if he could impose it would be] as [if] in the death of our late sovereign that the king should shut up the gates of London and suffer none to come in except he pay 12d. All merchants going for any place must pay these impositions.31 Henry 7. Empson and Dudley in his time in the seventh year of his reign.32 Henry 8. That would leave nothing [undone in the collection] demanded, yet never laid on any impositions.33

Appendix 2

271

[Monday 2 July] [James Whitelocke]34 14 Edward 3. Merchants of the staple.35 The king has divers profits besides.36 The king had poundage where he was to take a penny he took two pence, which was complained of. The king doth grant that no [levy shall be made other than due custom, and] that all strangers may [freely] carry out of the realm.37 22 Henry 8. In case of customs.38 [In previous] practice these taxes of laying impositions was never laid but in time of war. In time of war some impositions were, but never any imposition was laid but by consent of parliament. And in many years the king of England had none to advise him that he might lay impositions, until of late. The king entreated to hold impositions, but for a while.39 When the king sent unto his customers that he would not take the 3rd penny on merchants against their will.40 The king acknowledged that those burdens were laid of his subjects by means of necessity. Impositions made through the barons and clergy [not duly made, for] if the commons do not agree they cannot levy any such impositions.41 But an any complaint had been made in parliament, all impositions are taken away, because the king had laid but £100 per annum the people complained, and had it taken away.42 The Lord [Latimer] did cause that divers impositions were laid on merchants without consent of parliament and he was indicted and brought to trial for doing it, because he caused all commodities over carried, only to Calais.43 Item for as much as 44 In his [Henry 6] time, the customs [of Calais] were but £12,000.45 The customer was £68,000 paid, and so continued many years only for repair of the town of Calais, but it was only because there was abuse in officers in customs.46 Had engrossed all the of the land, he would pay so much for a kintall.47 In time of Henry 4 and 5, the subjects did condition that no imposition [of tonnage and poundage] should be laid on them [except by new grants in parliament]48 That the king might restrain the person if it be for matter of state, but merchants are made free by the law.49 All restraints are to be granted by act of parliament, which out of his [own] authority he cannot restrain or impose. The king hath a cause laid therefore Sir Roger Owen shows his record.50 That we the Commons show that for as much as the subsidies of wool and leather was very heavy and because a limitation of time was set down.51 Item [from 9 Rich. 2] let there be an intermission granted for a time [in the custom of wools, woolfells and leather] so that it be not hereafter challenged.52 Forms of customs are publicans.53 Mr Finch54 The question is whether the king by law may impose [upon merchandise imported or exported], for the question is not whether the king may lay on any impositions at all.55

272

Appendix 2

But the question is whether this late imposition by patent granted [is lawful]. But the question is whether the king may lay any imposition as please him.56 The whole question is fit and proper for this house. He held that the king had no patent by the common law to lay any imposition imported or exported.57 And [his argument was] not [primarily to prove that] any parliament hath power to bind the king.58 Mr. Attorney sayeth the king is [possessed of the power to impose] of his prerogative [if the law does not restrain it].59 But he said any man that would take away any man’s goods from him must show their reason for it.60 The power of the common law hath power to take away impositions.61 And although the king may restrain all his subjects for a time, ergo, the king may impose at his pleasure at all times.62 Though the king can restrain for a time, he cannot impose for that time. The king may make a bulwark in any man’s land in time of war therefore may he take money from him?63 He [Yelverton, argued that impositions were valid] to confine one merchant how he should deal, that he might not grow [too much greater] than another.64 I know no reason for it but that argument all impositions.65 That judgement about currants66 made nothing to [show that] our customs [were originally at the common law].67 Parliaments are as ancient as the common law and then were courts of justice as soon as there were common laws.68 He would speak something touching the common law [as prerogative power].69 There are two powers in a king one limitable and the other unlimitable, but the king hath not an absolute power above law but an absolute power by law. There is no prerogative so absolute but it is to be limited.70 The power of making war and peace is absolute in the king.71 If an heretic do come into the land it is lawful for any man to take him and his goods. The common law of England shall judge what is law (war) and what is peace. The common law in case of question doth allow the king may grant in matter of debt.72 The law is that the queen shall have dower of the crown lands [which are carried in a higher strain than the lands of] subjects.73 [The judges resolved] shall write the day of the succeeding prince the very [day of] the death of the former.74 [Thus] by the common law the king hath not the power to impose.75 Even if there were so much to be said for the king as one said, a of the former statutes in the end are against him.76 It was said that the commons were sore grieved and so they complained for the 40s [on a sack of wool] were taken away from [them]. The people pray that the king would take away the maletolt.77 In regard of the that they have granted they should not be charged with any change thereafter.78 He would [approve] of an act of parliament to tie the king, but if the king will take upon him in an act non obstante to make act that shall be firm.79

Appendix 2

273

Mr Brook80 The prerogative, the revenue and [estate]81 of a king, one time sure, and the subjects due unto them, one , from the seas and ports. From the land the commons have complained if they have been subject, they have drawn arguments of discontent. The general question whether the king may impose by the common law, whether he may impose on the commodities of Englishmen, when he might impose on strangers, and whether he had power to impose at his pleasure. He was of the opinion that the king could not impose on English commodities. He said that on the king’s side his opinion was resolute – Mr. Sergeant Doddridge.82

Notes 1

Introduction: Pasts and presents

1. The academic strand of Whig history is represented by S.R. Gardiner, History of England 1603–1642 (London 1883–1884), still perhaps the finest example of English historical scholarship – probably, and paradoxically, because it is the most innocent of the need to grapple with the contradictions of historiography. The tradition continued in the work of historians such as J.E. Neale, Elizabeth and her Parliaments (London 1953) and W. Notestein, The House of Commons 1604–1610 (Yale 1971). The popular strand of Whig history is represented by the writings of Lord Macaulay, History of England from the Accession of James 2nd, ed. C.H. Firth (London 1913), and his successor G.M. Trevelyan, England Under the Stuarts (London 1904). 2. H. Butterfield, The Englishman and his History (London 1944), pp. 2–5. 3. E. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes (London 1994), p. 3. 4. Ibid. 5. The seminal revisionist works were G. Elton, “A High Road to Civil War?” in From the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation, ed. C.H. Carter (London 1966); C. Russell, “Parliamentary History in Perspective 1604–1629”, History 61, pp. 1–27. A general summary of the interpretation is to be found in B. Coward, The Stuart Age, 1st edn (London 1980). 6. Counter-revisionist work is represented by Conflict in Early Stuart England, ed. A. Hughes and R. Cust. (London 1989). 7. See for instance A. Hughes, The Causes of the English Civil War (Basingstoke 1991), pp.165–166; B. Coward, The Stuart Age, 3rd edn (London 2003), p. 151; and M. Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality (Exeter 1994), p. 180. 8. E.H. Carr, What is History? (London 1961), pp. 96–98. 9. M. Foucault, Power/Knowledge (New York 1981), p. 128. 10. For instance, F. O’Gorman, The Long 18th Century (London 1997), pp. x–xi. 11. S. Schama, Citizens (London 1989), p. xiii. 12. E.H. Carr, What is History? p. 12. 13. R. Barthes, “The Discourse of History”, in Post-structuralism and the Question of History, ed. D. Attridge (Cambridge 1987), p. 3. 14. G. Elton, The Practice of History (London 1969), pp. 84–86. 15. Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History (London 1997), p. 84. The postmodernist position is summarised by K. Jenkins, Rethinking History (London 1991). 16. Evans, Defence of History, pp. 249–253. 17. A. Hughes, The Causes of the English Civil War, p. 1. 18. T. Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution (Cambridge 1989), pp. 2–3. 19. N. Carlin, The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford 1999), pp. 9, 14–15, 32. 20. See ahead, pp. 81–84. 21. M. Foucault, Power/Knowledge, pp. 130–133. 274

Notes

275

22. Ibid., p. 117. 23. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. Sheridan Smith (London 2002), pp. 5–9, 146. 24. M. Foucault, Power/Knowledge, p. 111. 25. Ibid., p. 112. 26. A. Fletcher, A County Community in Peace and War (London 1975), p. 14. 27. G. Elton, The Parliament of England (Cambridge 1986), esp. pp. 377–378; C. Russell, Parliaments and English Politics (Oxford 1979), p. 36. 28. T. Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution; M. Kennedy, “Legislation, Foreign Policy, and the ‘proper business’ of the Parliament of 1624”, Albion, vol. 3, no. 1, p. 41. 29. A. Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War: Warwickshire 1620—1660 (Cambridge 1987), p. 151; J. Dias, “Lead, Society and Politics in Derbyshire before the Civil War,” Midland History 51 (1981). 30. Carlin, The Causes of the English Civil War, pp. 159–162. 31. A theory summed up in the famous decree of Jacques Derrida that “there is nothing outside of the text”, and neatly criticised by Perry Anderson as “the contraction of language into itself.” P. Anderson, In the Tracks of Historical Materialism (London 1983), pp. 42, 46. 32. G. Burgess, Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution (Yale 1996) esp. pp. 1–2, 209–224. 33. See for instance, Conrad Russell, Parliaments and English Politics 1621–1629, p. 417. 34. G. Elton, The Parliament of England, esp. pp. 377–378; C. Russell, Parliaments and English Politics 1621–1629, p. 36. 35. D. Hirst, Authority and Conflict (London 1986), p. 153. 36. D. Dean, Law-making and society in late Elizabethan England (Cambridge 1996), p. 284. 37. For instance, J. Morrill, The Revolt of the Provinces (London 1980). Other seminal views of the English localities as isolationist and obstructive were A. Everitt, The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion (Leicester 1966) and C. Russell, Parliaments and English Politics 1621–1629. 38. A. Hughes, The Causes of the English Civil War, p. 33. 39. Quoted by J.B. Black, The Reign of Elizabeth (Oxford 1959), p. 477. 40. W. Notestein, The House of Commons 1604–1610, pp. 231–246.

2

Legislative beginnings: 1603–1610 1. D. Dean, “Parliament and Locality”, in The Parliaments of Elizabethan England, ed. D. Dean and N.L. Jones (Oxford 1990), pp. 139–162. 2. Devon Record Office, Totnes Borough Archive, 1579A/10/18. 3. Ibid., 1579A/10/22, 23a. 4. Ibid., 1579A/10/17. 5. Ibid., 1579A/10/23a. 6. Ibid., 1579A/10/17. 7. Ibid., 1579A/16/47. 8. Commons Journal, 1, p. 277. 9. Ibid., p. 287.

276

Notes

10. Brooking was not otherwise mentioned in the parliamentary records. Dottyn was appointed to one other committee, for the bill to restrain the use of leather made of horsehide or pigskin, 2 July 1607. 11. The free trade bill was brought into the Commons on 27 February 1606 (CJ, 1, 275a), and became statute 3 Jas.1 c.6. The Exeter trade bill was brought in on 10 December 1606 (CJ, 1, 1009a), and became statute 4 Jas.1 c.9. 12. As shown in the records of Dartmouth Corporation: Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough Archive, SM 1989, fol. 6. 13. W. Notestein, The House of Commons 1604–1610 (Yale 1971), p. 121. The proviso was put forward by the Exeter MP, John Prowse (CJ, 1, p. 275a). 14. W. Stephens, Seventeenth Century Exeter (Exeter 1958), p. 6. This is a useful discussion of Exeter’s ambivalent position on the conditions of trade question. 15. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough, DD 61848 (A). 16. The Exeter weir bill was introduced by John Prowse on 19 May 1610: CJ, 1, p. 429b. 17. Devon RO, Exeter Corporation, Act Book, 6, fol. 403; HMC Exeter, p. 419. 18. Devon RO, Exeter Corporation, B1/7, fol. 384; Act Book 6, fol. 403. 19. The National Archive, SP14/54, fol. 72. 20. Devon RO, Exeter Corporation, Act Book, 6, fol. 414. 21. B. Cresswell, The History of the Weaver’s Company (Exeter 1930), pp. 39–40. 22. CJ, 1, pp. 339, 349. 23. Somerset Record Office, Luttrell Ms. DD/1, 1/55/1: “Draught Act for Minehead Quay”; CJ, 1, pp. 398, 416. 24. An Act for the better preservation of fishing in the counties of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, and for the relief of Balkers, Condors and Fishermen from malicious suits”. 1 Jac.1, cap. 23. 25. D. Hirst, Authority and Conflict (London 1986), p. 34. 26. Elton has described this process in various publications; see, for instance, “The Triumph of Parliamentary Law”, in The Parliaments of Elizabethan England, ed. D. Dean (Oxford 1990), and Elton’s own The Parliament of England 1559–81 (Cambridge 1986) pp. 16–20, 32–36. 27. Christopher St German, Doctor and Student, ed. T.F.T Plucknett and J.L. Barton, (Seldon Society 91, 1974), p. 300. 28. Ibid., p. 327. 29. J. Bodin, The Six Books of the Commonwealth, ed. M.J. Tooley (Oxford 1955), vol. 1, pp. 32–44. 30. Sir Thomas Smith, De Republica Anglorum, ed. M. Dewar (Cambridge 1982) pp. 78–79. 31. R. Bowyer, Parliamentary Diary of Robert Bowyer 1606–7, ed. D.H. Wilson (New York 1971), pp. 258–289. 32. W. Cobbett, Complete Collection of State Trials (London 1809–1828), vol. 2, pp. 482–486. 33. J. Rushworth, Historical Collections (London 1659–1701), vol. 4, pp. 325–326. 34. Elton, The Parliaments of Elizabethan England, pp. 35–36. 35. G. Elton, The Parliament of England, esp. pp. 377–378. 36. G. Elton, Reform and Reformation (London 1977), p. 221. 37. Ibid., pp. 224–225. 38. G. Unwin, Industrial Organization in the 16th and 17th Centuries (London 1957), pp. 139, 175; M. Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (London 1963), pp. 89, 120.

Notes

277

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism, pp. 124–132. Elton, Reform and Reformation, p. 225. D. Palliser, The Age of Elizabeth (London 1983), p. 249. Unwin, Industrial Organization, pp. 114–115. Ibid., pp. 132–135 J. Guy, Tudor England (Oxford 1988), p. 413. Somerset Record Office, Bridgewater Borough, D/B/bw 1591. Ibid., D/B/bw 2409. Statutes of the Realm (London 1810–1828), vol. 4, 1022–1024. Diary of Walter Yonge 1604–1628, ed. G. Roberts, Camden Society 41 (London 1848), pp. 4, 9. 49. W. Yonge, The Justice of the Peace, his Vade-Mecum (London 1642).

3

The constitutional dimension 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

TNA, E178/1994; H.C. Maxwell-Lyte, History of Dunster, p. 174. Somerset Record Office, Luttrell Ms. DD/L, 1/55/1. Ibid., DD/L/P, 30/50. TNA, E190, 1084/7, 1084/17, 1084/23. Somerset RO, Luttrell Ms. DD/L, 1/55/1. Ibid., Luttrell family letters of 1604 and 1609. Ibid., “Draught Act for Minehead Quay”; Commons Journal, pp. 398a–398b, 416a. TNA, E190, 1086/8, 1086/15, 1086/19, 1087/1, 1087/14, 1087/16. Commons Debates 1621, ed. W. Notestein (New Haven 1935), 2, p. 82; Edward Nicholas, Proceeedings and Debates in the House of Commons 1620–1 (Oxford 1766), vol. 1, p. 68. Commons Debates 1621, ed. W. Notestein, 2, p. 87; 5, p. 481. Ibid., 2, p. 87. Nicholas, Debates 1620–1, 1, p. 73; Commons Debates 1621, ed. W. Notestein, 5, p. 481. TNA, SP 12/77/44. CJ, 536b. Ibid., 537b. Ibid., 556b. Nicholas, Debates 1620–1, 1, p. 175. Commons Debates 1621, ed. W. Notestein, 3, pp. 190–191. Ibid., 3, p. 372; CJ, 617a. Somerset RO, Luttrell Ms, DD/L, 1/59/1. T. Gray, “Fishing and the Commercial World of Early Stuart Dartmouth”, in Tudor and Stuart Devon, ed. T. Gray, M. Rowe and A. Erskine (Exeter 1992), p. 177. W. MacCaffrey, Exeter 1540–1640 (Harvard 1976), p. 227. C. Stone, “Devon and Parliament in the Early Stuart Period”, PhD thesis (Bryn Mawyr 1986), pp. 244–245. D. Hirst, Authority and Conflict (London 1986), p. 104. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough, DD67913. CJ, 1, pp. 1162–1163. W. Notestein, The House of Commons 1604–1610 (Yale 1971), pp. 74–75.

278

Notes

28. Ibid., p. 71. 29. R. Lockyer, The Early Stuarts (London 1989), p. 158. 30. C. Tite, Impeachment and Parliamentary Judicature in Early Stuart England (London 1974), p. 55. 31. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough. SM1989, fol. 20. 32. Ibid., DD4771, fol. 7. 33. Ibid., SM2004, fol. 7. 34. Ibid.. SM1989, fol. 34. 35. Nottinghamshire Archives, Nottingham Borough, CA 3379, fol. 32. 36. Ibid., CA 3395, fols 21, 28. 37. The Letters of John Holles, ed. P.R.Seddon (Thoroton Society 35, Nottingham 1983), p. 242. 38. Nottinghamshire Archives, Nottingham Borough, CA 3398, fol. 56. 39. Ibid., CA 3399, fols 37, 60. 40. See ahead, pp. 106–107. 41. Ibid., CA 3402, fol. 57. 42. C.F. Patterson, Urban Patronage in Early Modern England (Stanford, California 1999), p. 77. 43. C. Wilson, England’s Apprenticeship 1603–1763 (London 1965), p. 36. 44. K. Wrightson, English Society 1580–1680 (London 1982), pp. 28–29. 45. Ibid., p. 139. 46. T.K. Rabb, Enterprise and Empire: Merchant and Gentry Investment in the Expansion of England 1575–1630 (Harvard 1967), pp. 8–14. 47. Hirst, Authority and Conflict, p. 9. 48. A. Hassell-Smith, Government and Politics in Norfolk 1558–1603 (Oxford 1974), pp. 282–292, 338. 49. W.G. Hoskins, The Age of Plunder (London 1976), pp. 133–136; Devon Monastic Lands, ed. J.A. Youings (Devon and Cornwall Record Society 1955). 50. L. Brace, The Idea of Property in Seventeenth Century England (Manchester 1998). p. 6. 51. Wrightson, English Society 1580–1680, p. 121. 52. E. Kerridge, Agrarian Problems in the 16th Century (London 1969), esp. pp. 32–33. 53. Wrightson, English Society, pp. 31, 140. 54. D. Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion (Oxford 1987), p. 19. 55. A. Low, “Agricultural Reform and the Love Poems of Thomas Carew”, in Culture and Cultivation in Early Modern England, ed. M. Leslie and T. Raylor (Leicester 1992), p. 67. 56. M. Judson, The Crisis of the Constitution (London 1949), pp. 230, 242. 57. Hirst, Authority and Conflict, p. 111. 58. J.P. Somerville, Politics and Ideology in England 1603 to 1640 (London 1986), p. 124. 59. Hirst, Authority and Conflict, p. 111. 60. C. Hill, The English Revolution 1640 (London 1955), pp. 53–54, 58. 61. British Library, E419/1 City Petition, December 1646. 62. Brace, Idea of Property, pp. 6, 100. 63. Ibid., pp. 106–108. 64. Ibid., p. 5. 65. Ibid., pp. 95, 106.

Notes

279

66. C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford 1962), pp. 64–65. 67. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough, DD 67723. 68. Ibid., SM1989, fol. 6. 69. Totnes Borough, 1579A/16/35. 70. This, as John Ferris pointed out to me, was the committee to examine the Spanish Company charter. See also Notestein, The House of Commons 1604– 1610, pp. 120–121. 71. T. Gray, “Fishing and The Commercial World of Early Stuart Dartmouth”, in Tudor and Stuart Devon, ed. T. Gray, M. Rowe and A. Erskine, p. 181. He describes the importance of the Newfoundland trade to Dartmouth, and notes their frequent petitions defending it against London monopoly interests. 72. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough, SM1989, fol. 6. 73. Commons Debates 1621, ed. W. Notestein, 4, p. 272. 74. Ibid.. 3, p. 106; 6, p. 107. 75. Nicholas, Debates 1620–1, pp. 329–330. 76. Commons Journal, 1, p. 591b. 77. Ibid. 78. B. Coward, The Stuart Age 2nd edn (London 1994), p. 26. 79. Notestein, The House of Commons 1604–1610, pp. 106–108. 80. The most cogent account is probably still that of S.R. Gardiner, History of England (London 1883–1884), vol. 2, pp. 2–12, 64–70, which is largely followed here. 81. R. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 1550–1663 (Cambridge 1993), p. 206. 82. The king’s speech is in Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ed. E.R. Foster (New Haven 1966), 2, pp. 100–106. 83. Gardiner, History of England, vol. 2, p. 71. 84. Parliamentary Debates of 1610, ed. S.R. Gardiner, Camden Society, Old Series, lxxxi, p. 39. 85. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough, DD67724. 86. Commons Journal, 1, p. 431. 87. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough, DD67724. 88. Commons Journal, 1, p. 432. 89. TNA, SP14/54, fol. 73. 90. As opposed to the account in Parliamentary Debates of 1610, pp. 41–42. See, Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ed. E.R. Foster, 2, p. 113, n. 2. 91. Wilson, England’s Apprenticeship 1603–1763, p. 40. 92. W.B. Stephens, Seventeenth Century Exeter (Exeter 1958), p. 39. 93. Unlike, for instance, Sir Richard Paulet’s Diary, Hampshire RO, Jervoise Ms., 44M69/F2/15/1, and the notes in Parliamentary Debates 1610, ed. S.R. Gardiner, Camden Society, Old Series 81. 94. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough, DD67721. 95. It differs significantly from the other version in the Yelverton manuscripts, BL Add. Ms. 48119. (Printed in Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ed. E.R. Foster, 2, pp. 152–165.) 96. Notestein, The House of Commons 1604–10, pp. 120–121. 97. R.G. Usher, “Nicholas Fuller, A Forgotten Exponent of English Liberty”, AHR, vol. 12, pp. 743–758.

280

Notes

98. Proceedings in Parliament 1610, 2, p. 109. 99. The Yelverton has hitherto been regarded as representative of the speech as given. See for instance, Somerville, Politics and Ideology in England 1603 to 1640, p. 148. 100. Parliamentary Debates 1610, ed. S.R. Gardiner, Camden Society 81, pp. 58– 59. The remainder of the notes of the speech in this version is a sketchy and disjointed list of precedents which does not seem to correlate with either of the longer versions. 101. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough, DD67721, fol. 1; Proceedings in Parliament 1610, 2, p. 152. 102. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough, DD67721, fol. 1v. 103. Somerville, Politics and Ideology, p. 148. 104. Sir John Fortescue, The Difference between Dominum Regale and Dominum Politicum and Regale (London 1714), pp. 2–3. 105. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough, DD67721, fol. 1. 106. W. Cobbett, Complete Collection of State Trials (London 1809–1828), vol. 2, pp. 483–486. 107. Ibid., p. 482; Paulet’s Diary, fol. 39. 108. James 1st, “The Trew Law of Free Monarchies”, in C.H. McIlwain, The Political works of James 1st (Cambridge, Mass. 1918) pp. 61–62; R. Filmer, Patriarcha, ed. P. Laslett (Oxford 1949), pp. 102–104, 113–118. 109. Somerville, Politics and Ideology, p. 152. 110. Proceedings in Parliament 1610, 2, p. 152. 111. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough, DD 67721, fol. 2. 112. J.P. Somerville, “Ideology, Property and the Constitution”, in Conflict in Early Stuart England, ed. R. Cust and A. Hughes (London 1989), pp. 51–55. 113. Ibid., pp. 49–52. 114. Ibid., pp. 53–54. 115. As Somerville points out, a contrast between power by conquest and power by gift necessarily implies that the gift is from the people: Politics and Ideology, p. 66. 116. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough, DD67721, fol. 2. 117. Parliamentary Debates 1610, p. 76. 118. Somerville, in “Ideology, Property and the Constitution”, p. 60, cites Hoskins in 1610 as the first statement of this principle in the context of the disputes between the Early Stuarts and their parliaments; the next example being Sir Edwin Sandys in 1614. 119. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough, DD67721, fol. 6. 120. Gardiner, History of England, vol. 2, pp. 66–67. 121. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough DD67725. This is essentially identical to the version as printed, from a different source, in Proceedings in Parliament 1610, 2, pp. 405–410. 122. See above, p. 58. 123. Somerville, Politics and Ideology, pp. 151–153; Coward, Stuart Age, 2nd edn, p. 140; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 205. 124. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough, DD67721, fol. 1. 125. Ibid., fol. 5. 126. Ibid., fol. 6v. 127. Ibid., fol. 7.

Notes 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135.

136. 137. 138. 139.

140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147.

4

281

W. Cobbett, Complete Collection of State Trials, vol. 2, p. 407. Commons Journal, 1, p. 443. Proceedings in Parliament 1610, 2, pp. 165–166. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough, DD67723. Paulet’s Diary, fol. 34; Parliamentary Debates 1610, pp. 64–65. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough, DD67721, fol. 15. P. Russell, Dartmouth (Callington 1982), p. 72. Foster, who prints a full version of the speech (Proceedings in Parliament 1610, 2, pp. 170–197) assumes that Hedley opened the proceedings on 28 June; but Paulet’s diary indicates that he followed Bacon directly, on the 25th. Proceedings in Parliament 1610, 2, p. 174. Parliamentary Debates 1610, pp. 116–117. D. Sacks, “The Corporate Town in the English State: Bristol’s ‘Little Businesses’ 1625–1641”, Past and Present 110 (1986), pp. 69–105. For the former view: C. Hill, Century of Revolution (London 1961), p. 124 and The Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (Oxford 1965), pp. 9–11; for the latter: M. Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (London 1963). Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 205. Ibid., p. 222. Ibid., pp. 219–220. Ibid., pp. 316–317. Ibid., pp. 349–350. A. Fletcher, The Outbreak of the English Civil War (London 1981), pp. 393– 398. Hill, Century of Revolution, pp. 111, 122. G. Burgess, Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution (Yale 1996), esp. pp. 1–2, 209–224.

The foreign policy dimension 1. S.R. Gardiner, History of England (London 1883–1884), 2, p. 249. 2. For instance, S.R. Gardiner, History of England 1603–42, 4, pp. 1–2. 3. C. Russell, Parliaments and English Politics 1621–1629 (Oxford 1979), pp. 417–431. 4. T. Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution (Cambridge 1989); M. Kennedy, “Legislation, Foreign Policy, and the ‘Proper Business’ of the Parliament of 1624”, Albion, vol. 3, no. 1, 1991, p. 41. 5. P. Russell, Dartmouth (Callington 1982), p. 65. 6. Ibid., p. 72. 7. APC, 1588 (London 1890), pp. 67, 137. 8. APC, 1588, pp. 67, 103–104, 137, 374. 9. VCH Somerset, 2, p. 256. 10. APC, 1588–1589, p. 108. 11. APC, 1591–1592, p. 222. 12. HMC Salisbury, 4, p. 121. 13. W. MacCaffrey, “Parliament and Foreign Policy”, in The Parliaments of Elizabethan England, ed. Dean and Jones (Oxford 1990), pp. 66–89.

282

Notes

14. The incident is related in TNA, SP14/118, fols 54–55. 15. The Letters of John Holles, Thoroton Society 35 (Nottingham 1983), p. 242. 16. Commons Journal, 1, p. 601a; Commons Debates 1621 (New Haven 1935) 6, p. 121. 17. Diary of Walter Yonge, ed. G. Roberts, Camden Society 41 (London 1848), p. 40. 18. National Library of Wales, Wyn of Gwydir Ms. 9057E/959. 19. CSP Domestic 1619–23, p. 319. 20. Commons Debates 1621, 3, p. 460. 21. Ibid. 22. Commons Debates 1621, 4, p. 441. 23. Ibid., 3, p. 460. 24. Ibid., 2, p. 452; 3, p. 460; 4, p. 200; 5, p. 215. 25. C. Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, p. 131; “The Foreign Policy Debate in the House of Commons in 1621”, in Historical Journal, vol. 20, pp. 289– 309. 26. Commons Debates 1621, 3, p. 460. 27. Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, p. 131. 28. Commons Debates 1621, 3, p. 470. 29. Devon RO, Exeter Corporation Letter Book, 60c L206. 30. Ibid., 60c L210. 31. Gardiner, History of England, 4, pp. 249, 253, 257–259. 32. Ibid., pp. 261–262. 33. Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, p. 142. 34. R. Zaller, The Parliament of 1621 (Berkeley 1971), p. 182–3. 35. Yonge, Diary, ed. G. Roberts. 36. Ibid., p. 33. 37. Ibid., p. 34. 38. Ibid., p. 58. 39. G.M. Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts (London 1904) p. 111. 40. Yonge, Diary, ed. G. Roberts, p. 67 41. Ibid., p. 68. 42. Ibid., p. 70. 43. R.E. Ruigh, The Parliament of 1624 (Harvard 1971); T. Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution. 44. M.B. Young, Charles I (London 1997). 45. Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. N.E. McClure (Philadelphia 1939), 2, p. 548, 20 March 1624. 46. Sir Walter Earle, Diary of Proceedings in the House of Commons 1624, BL Add. Ms. 18,597, fol. 94; John Holles, Diary of Proceedings in the House of Commons 1624, BL Harleian Ms. 6383, fol. 103v; CJ74a. 47. CJ741; Edward Nicholas, Diary of Proceedings in the House of Commons 1624, TNA, SP 14/166, fol. 91v; Earle, Diary, fol. 95v; Holles, Diary, fol. 104v. 48. Nicholas, Diary, fol. 97v; Earle, Diary, fol. 99v. 49. Nicholas, Diary, fol. 101. 50. Ibid., fol. 101v. 51. D’Ewes, Diary, fol. 95v. 52. Devon RO, Exeter Corporation, Letter Book 60d, L268. 53. Yonge, Diary, ed. G. Roberts, pp. 81, 84.

Notes

283

54. Ibid., p. 89. 55. Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, pp. 260–262. 56. C. Thompson, “Court Politics and Parliamentary Conflict in 1625”, in Conflict in Early Stuart England, ed. R. Cust and A. Hughes (London 1989), pp. 171–172, 179, 188. 57. The nature of the forces involved in the attack on Buckingham is not always clear, but in outline it seems that the original initiative came from the Commons in 1625, and by 1626 his enemies in the Lords had joined the hunt. 58. Yonge, Diary, ed. G. Roberts, pp. 91–92. Yonge is also thought to have been the instigator of a much more detailed record of this controversial parliament. BL, Add. Ms. 22,474. Initialled “WY”. 59. Thompson, “Court Politics and Parliamentary Conflict in 1625”, p. 187. See ahead, p. 132. 60. Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke 1626, Univ. Library Cambridge, Ms. Dd.12, 20–22. fols 71, 161, 203. 61. Commons Debates 1628, ed. Johnson, Cole, Keeler and Bidwell (New Haven 1978), 3, p. 310; 4, pp. 201, 208, 214. 62. CJ, 1, p. 851b. 63. Whitelocke Diary 1626, fol. 284. 64. W.B. Stephens, “English Wine Imports 1603–40”, in Tudor and Stuart Devon, ed. T. Gray, M. Rowe and A. Erskine (Exeter 1992), pp. 150,167,172. 65. D. Hirst, Authority and Conflict (London 1986), p. 135; Ruigh, The Parliament of 1624, pp. 221–227; M.B. Young, “Revisionism and the Council of War 1624–1626”, Parliamentary History 8 (1989), pp. 1–27. 66. R. Cust, The Forced Loan and English Politics 1626–1628 (Oxford 1987), pp. 153–154. 67. Yonge, Diary, ed. G Roberts, p. 61. 68. Cust, Forced Loan, p. 84. 69. Yonge, Diary, ed. G. Roberts, pp. 97, 100, 109. 70. Cust, Forced Loan, p. 237. 71. Yonge, Diary, BL Add Ms. 35, 331, fol. 72v. 72. Devon RO, Exeter Corporation, Letter Book, 60d. L.313. 73. TNA, SP16/33/126; SP16/36/34; SP16/55/1.

5

Legislative ambitions frustrated: 1614–1640 1. C. Russell, Parliaments and English Politics (Oxford 1979), pp. 93, 99. 2. B. Coward, Stuart Age, 2nd edn (London 1994), p. 153; D. Hirst, Authority and Conflict (London 1986), p. 128. 3. E. Nicholas, Debates 1620–1 (Oxford 1766), 2, p. 303. 4. Commons Debates 1621 (New Haven 1935), 2, p. 452; 4, p. 200. 5. Somerset RO, Bridgewater Borough, D/B/bw 1609. 6. Records of the Borough of Nottingham, ed. W.H. Stevenson and J. Raine (London and Nottingham 1889), 4, p. 376. 7. R. Zaller, The Parliament of 1621 (Berkeley 1971), p. 21. 8. Devon RO, Exeter Corporation, Letter Book 60d, L361. 9. Commons Debates 1621, 2, p. 294.

284

Notes

10. D. Dean, “Parliament and Locality”, in Parliaments of Elizabethan England, ed. Dean (Oxford 1990) pp. 153–156. 11. TNA, SP 14, 121/34, 35, 36. 12. Devon RO, Exeter Corporation, Letter Book, 60d, L268. 13. Somerset RO, Bridgewater Borough, D/B/bw 1609. 14. E. Kerridge, Textile Manufactures in Early Modern England (Manchester 1985), pp. 26–27. 15. Commons Journal, 1, p. 578. 16. Ibid., pp. 591b, 626a, 640b, 654b, 673a. 17. Ibid., p. 591b. 18. Commons Debates 1621, 3, p. 82; CJ, 1, p. 591b. 19. CJ, 1, p. 654a. 20. West Devon RO, Plymouth Corporation Archive, W 48, fol. 92. 21. Devon RO, Exeter Corporation, Letter Book, 60d, L.361. 22. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough, DD 61615. 23. Commons Debates 1621, 2, p. 78; CJ, 1, p. 521a. 24. CJ, 1, p. 620b. 25. Commons Debates 1621, 4, pp. 391–397; 3, pp. 348–349, 374; 6, p. 178. 26. Ibid., 3, p. 345. 27. Ibid., p. 362. 28. Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, pp. 118–119. 29. CJ 636b; Commons Debates 1621, 3, p. 399; Nicholas, Debates 1620–1, 2, p. 157. 30. Devon RO, Exeter Corporation, Letter Book, 60c L206, L209. 31. Ibid., L210. 32. Ibid., 60d, L268. 33. Ibid., L243. 34. Ibid. 35. Nottinghamshire Archives, Nottingham Corporation, CA3398 fol. 42; Proceedings in Parliament 1625, ed. M. Jansson and W.B. Bidwell (Yale 1987), p. 639. 36. National Library of Wales, Wyn of Gwydir Ms. 9058E/1096A. 37. Ibid., 9057E/943. 38. Ibid., 9057E/959. 39. Diary of Walter Yonge, ed. G. Roberts (London 1848), p. 51. 40. Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, p. 36. 41. Yonge, Diary, ed. G. Roberts, p. 76. 42. BL, Harleian MS. 6987 fols 200–201; Buckingham’s letter to James, discussed in Ruigh, Parliament of 1624, pp. 214–215. 43. See above, pp. 106–107, 124. 44. Commons Debates 1621, 2, p. 544; 4, p. 384. 45. Ibid., 3, p. 361. 46. Nicholas, Debates 1620–1, 2, pp. 301–303. 47. BL, Diary of Sir Walter Earle 1624, Add. Ms. 18,597, fol. 66v. 48. Proceedings in Parliament 1625, ed. M. Jansonn and W. Bidwell (Yale 1987), pp. 414, 417–418, 419. 49. C. Thompson, “Court Politics and Parliamentary Conflict in 1625”, in Conflict in Early Stuart England, ed. R. Cust and A. Hughes (London 1989), pp. 168–192.

Notes

285

50. Ibid., p. 187. 51. R. Cust, “Charles 1st, the Privy Council and the Forced Loan” JBS 25 (1982), pp. 208–235. 52. Whitelocke Diary 1626, 13 March, fol. 146. 53. Ibid., 27 March, fol. 234. 54. Ibid., 12 June, fol. 484. 55. Cust, Forced Loan, p. 23. 56. G.M. Trevelyan, England Under the Stuarts (London 1904), p. 117. 57. Russell, Parliament and English Politics, pp. 388–389. 58. Hirst, Authority and Conflict, p. 152. 59. Commons Debates 1628, ed. Johnson, Keeler, Cole and Bidwell (New Haven 1977), 2, p. 436. 60. Commons Debates 1628, 3, pp. 275, 281. 61. Hirst, Authority and Conflict, p. 153; Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, p. 389. 62. Bristol RO, 36074/139b 63. Bristol RO, Smyth of Long Ashton Ms. AC/C48/6, 12. 64. S.R. Gardiner, History of England (London 1883–1884), vol. 6, pp. 296–298. 65. Commons Debates 1628, 4, p. 114. 66. Ibid., p. 123. 67. Ibid., pp. 169–170. 68. Gardiner, History of England, 6, pp. 306–309. 69. Commons Debates 1628, 4, pp. 206, 213. 70. Hirst, Authority and Conflict, p. 140. 71. Ibid. 72. Commons Debates 1628, 3, p. 595. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid., 4, pp. 449, 458. 75. Ibid., pp. 388–395. 76. Ibid., p. 473 77. Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, pp. 399–401; S.R. Gardiner, History of England, vol. 7, p. 30; D. Hirst, Authority and Conflict, p. 154; C. Thompson, “Divided Leadership of the House of Commons”, in Faction and Parliament, ed. K. Sharpe (London 1985), p. 249. 78. Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, p. 399. 79. Ibid., p. 390. 80. R. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution (Cambridge 1993), pp. 232–233. 81. CJ, 1, p. 920; Commons Debates 1629, ed. W. Notestein and F.H. Relf (Minneapolis 1921), p. 4. 82. C. Thompson, “The Divided Leadership of the House of Commons”, in Faction and Parliament, ed. K. Sharpe, pp. 251–252. 83. Rushworth, Collections (London 1659–1701), 1, p. 642; Commons Debates 1629, p. 11. 84. Commons Debates 1629, pp. 6, 113. 85. Gardiner, History of England, 7, pp. 34–35. 86. Commons Debates 1629, pp. 108–109. 87. Gardiner, History of England, 7, p. 35. 88. S.R. Gardiner (ed.), Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution (Oxford 1889), p. 83.

286

Notes

89. Strode was MP for Bere Alston, near Plymouth. His family was very prominent in Devon politics, his father, Sir William, having sat for the county in 1624. Sir William had also been of direct service to Plymouth “for withstanding the patent for packing and salting of fish and for other things”. West Devon RO, Plymouth Corporation, W132, fol. 191. 90. Commons Debates 1629, p. 240; Gardiner, History of England, 7, p. 69. 91. C. Thompson, “The Divided Leadership of the House of Commons in 1629”, in Faction and Parliament, ed. K. Sharpe, pp. 245–284. 92. Ibid., pp. 246, 255, 262, 281. 93. Commons Debates 1629, p. 241. 94. Gardiner, History of England, 6, p. 83. 95. Hirst, Authority and Conflict, pp. 158–159. 96. L.J. Reeve, Charles 1st and the Road to Personal Rule (Cambridge 1989), p. 111. 97. K. Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles 1st (Yale 1992). 98. CSP Domestic 1623–5, pp. 484–485. 99. Devon RO, Exeter Corporation, Act Book 1/8, fols 20, 35, 71. 100. LJ, 4, pp. 536–537; HMC 5th Report, pp. 4–5, 24. 101. CJ, 8, p. 361. 102. Devon RO, Dartmouth Borough, DD 62669. 103. CJ, 2, p. 21. 104. Ibid., 2, pp. 154, 184. 105. West Devon RO, Plymouth Corporation, W11, W132, fol. 250. 106. “An Act for the relief of captives taken by Moorish pirates”: 16 Car.1 c. 24.

6

The vacuum filled: The Triennial Act of 1641 1. As summarised by J. Morrill, “The Religious Context of the English Civil War”, TRHS (1984), p. 161. 2. For instance, A. Hughes, The Causes of the English Civil War (Basingstoke 1991), pp. 165–166; B. Coward, The Stuart Age, 3rd edn (London 2003), p. 151; M. Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality (Exeter 1994), p. 180. 3. Notebook of Sir John Northcote, Two Diaries of the Long Parliament, ed. M. Jansson (Yale 1984), p. 112. 4. For the text of the act, J. Rushworth, Historical Collections (London 1680), pt. 3, vol. 1, pp. 189–192. 5. Ibid., p. 189. 6. T. Bailey, Annals of Nottinghamshire (London 1863), vol. 2, p. 648. The statutes of Edward III were 4 Ed.3, Stat.4 and 36 Ed.3, Stat.10. 7. See ahead, pp. 212–215. 8. D. Stevenson, The Scottish Revolution 1637–1644 (Newton Abbot 1973), p. 169. 9. Ibid., pp. 166–167. 10. J. Wormald, Court, Kirk and Community in Scotland 1475–1625 (London 1981), pp. 155–158. 11. Stevenson, Scottish Revolution, pp. 48, 51–53, 56, 69. 12. Ibid., p. 169. 13. On the Right of Kingship among the Scots (1579).

Notes

287

14. M. Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: The Origins of Radical Politics (New York 1966), pp. 14, 103. Walzer’s work has often been criticised because it looks for the appearance of “ideologies” and “parties” of a modern kind. But to dismiss it thus is to overlook an invaluable analysis of the crucial development of the assumption of independent judgement. See also, Q. Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge 1978), 2, pp. 220, 227–230, 234. 15. Printed in London, 1641, as Some special arguments which warrant Scottish subjects lawfully to take up arms in defence of religion and liberty. 16. Stevenson, Scottish Revolution, pp. 88–89. 17. Ibid., pp. 192–194. 18. M. Jansson (ed.), Proceedings in Parliament 1614 (Philadelphia 1988), p. 312. 19. Gardiner, History of England, vol. 2, p. 240. 20. Ibid., pp. 244–245. 21. 27 May 1614, Proceedings in Parliament 1614, p. 368. 22. Gardiner, History of England, vol. 6, p. 83. 23. An Answer to a Remonstrance, BL, E476 (20). 24. Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, ed. S.R. Gardiner (Oxford 1968), pp. 316–317. 25. Morrill, “The Religious Context of the English Civil War”, TRHS (1984), p. 161; The Nature of the English Revolution (Oxford 1993) p. 51. 26. Coward, The Stuart Age, 3rd edn, p. 192. 27. N. Carlin, The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford 1999) pp. 25, 29. 28. A. Fletcher, The Outbreak of the English Civil War (London 1981), p. 22. 29. R. Briggs, Early Modern France (Oxford 1977), p. 88. 30. Gardiner, History of England, vol. 2, p. 251. 31. C. Russell, Fall of the British Monarchies (Oxford 1991), p. 225. 32. Rushworth, Collections, vol. 4, pp. 23, 145–149. 33. C. Walker, The History of Independency (London 1661), p. 6. He became MP for Wells in 1646. 34. In “The Case of Ship Money” (1640), quoted by J.P. Somerville, Politics and Ideology in England (London 1986), p. 179. 35. Rushworth, Collections, vol. 4, pp. 25–26. 36. William Drakes Notebook, Two Diaries of the Long Parliament, ed. M. Jansonn (Yale 1984), p. 6. 37. Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, ed. W.D. Macray, 6 vols (Oxford 1958), vol. 1, p. 279. 38. G. Burnet, History of His Own Time (London 1724), vol. 1, p. 197. 39. D. Hirst, The Representative of the People? (Cambridge 1975). 40. D. Hirst, Authority and Conflict (London 1986), p. 195. 41. Ibid., p. 201; England in Conflict (London 1999), p. 167. 42. For instance by Coward, Stuart Age, 3rd edn, p. 191. 43. V. Pearl, London and the Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution (Oxford 1961), p. 205. 44. Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, vol. 1, pp. 342–343. 45. Ibid., p. 276. 46. Journal of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, ed. W. Notestein (Yale 1923), pp. 51–53. 47. Diary of William Clarke, Clarke Papers, Worcester College, Oxford Ms. unfol. 21 November 1640.

288

Notes

48. Notebook of Sir John Northcote, Two Diaries of the Long Parliament, ed. M. Jansson, p. 112. The proposal for annual parliaments became the Triennial Act. 49. Notebook of Sir John Northcote, ed. A.H.A. Hamilton. (London 1877), pp. 54–55. 50. Ibid., p. 74. 51. Ibid., pp. 75, 81. 52. D’Ewes, ed. Notestein, p. 88. 53. Ibid., pp. 196–197. 54. P. Croft, “Annual Parliaments”, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, vol. 59, p. 155. 55. D’Ewes, ed. Notestein, p. 197. 56. W. Hunt, The Puritan Moment (Harvard 1983), p. 286. 57. Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, vol. 1, p. 279. 58. Rushworth, Collections, vol. 4, pp. 145–149. 59. Burnet, History of His Own Time (London 1724), 1, p. 197. 60. Rushworth, Collections, vol. 4, pp. 154–155. 61. Ibid.; LJ, 3, p. 142b. 62. William Clarke’s Diary, Clarke Papers, Worcester College, Oxford MS, unfol. 23 January 1641. 63. Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies, p. 225. 64. The English Civil War, a Contemporary Account (London 1996), p. 64. Quoted in Gardiner, History of England, vol. 9, p. 290. 65. Rushworth, Collections, vol. 4, p. 186. 66. D’Ewes, ed. Notestein, p. 365. 67. Rushworth, Collections, vol. 4, p. 186. 68. Ibid., p. 188. 69. English Civil War, a Contemporary Account (London 1996) p. 64. 70. Gardiner, History of England, vol. 6, pp. 274–275. 71. D’Ewes, ed. Notestein, p. 360; Two Diaries of the Long Parliament, ed. M. Jansson, p. 86. 72. LJ, p. 162b. 73. Gardiner, History of England, vol. 9, p. 290. 74. D’Ewes, ed. Notestein, pp 364–365. 75. Ibid., p. 365. 76. William Drakes Parliamentary Notebook, Two Diaries of the Long Parliament, ed. M. Jansson, p. 6. 77. D.Hirst, England in Conflict (London 1999), p. 167. 78. Diurnal Occurrences, 15 February 1641, BL, E523, p. 39. 79. Clarendon, History, vol. 1, p. 279. 80. William Drake’s Notebook, Two Diaries, p. 6. 81. Rushworth, Collections, vol. 4, pp. 26–27. 82. Ibid., p. 26. 83. Ibid., p. 288. 84. Ibid., pp. 146–149. 85. Coward, The Stuart Age, 2nd edn (London 1994), p. 192. 86. See above, pp. 31–32. 87. Above, pp. 32–33. 88. Above, p. 71.

Notes

289

89. See, for instance, P. Zagorin, The History of Political Thought in the English Revolution (London 1965) pp. 194–201. The fact that the concept had become orthodox is widely stressed by revisionist inclined historians. 90. Devon RO, Exeter Corporation Letter Book, L243. 91. See above, pp. 127–129. 92. For the “Divine Right” tradition on this, see above, p. 71. 93. Rushworth, Collections, vol. 4, p. 106. 94. Lord Digby’s Speech on the Triennial Bill, BL, E196/6. 95. Rushworth, Collections, vol. 4, pp. 201–202.

7

Politics and religion: The balance of motivation

1. See for instance, B. Coward, The Stuart Age, 2nd edn (London 1994), p. 236. 2. Quoted in Christopher Hill, Puritanism and Revolution (London 1958), p. 292. Harrington also believed that underlying the political collapse of the crown was a change in the balance of property power. 3. J. Morrill, “The Religious Context of the English Civil War”, TRHS 1984, p. 161. 4. W. Hunt, The Puritan Moment (Harvard 1983); D. Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion (Oxford 1987). 5. M. Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality (Exeter 1994), p. 180. 6. Ibid., p. 181. 7. M. Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints (New York 1966), p. 52. 8. L. Hutchinson, Life of Lucy and John Hutchinson, ed. J. Hutchinson (London 1846), pp. 98–99. 9. Ibid., p. 97. 10. Discussed in R.C. Richardson, The Debate on the English Revolution (London 1977), pp. 10–11. 11. Hutchinson, Life, ed. J. Hutchinsom, pp. 98–99. 12. Above, pp. 152–154. 13. D. Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion ; Hunt, The Puritan Moment. 14. Hutchinson, Life, ed. J. Hutchinson, p. 119. 15. Diary of Walter Yonge 1605–1628, ed. G. Roberts, Camden Society 41 (London 1848), p. 64. 16. Yonge’s Diary 1635, BL Add. Mss. 35,331 fol. 62. 17. Yonge’s Diary, ed. Roberts, p. 84. 18. N. Tyacke,Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism (Oxford 1987). 19. Yonge’s Diary, ed. Roberts, p. 9, as noted by C. Hill, Society and Puritanism (London 1964) p. 34. 20. Yonge’s Diary, ed. Roberts, p. 24. 21. Ibid., p. 64. 22. Ibid., p. 75. 23. Yonge’s Diary 1642–1645, BL Add. Mss. 18,777–18,780. 24. J.T. Cliffe, Puritans in Conflict (London 1988), p. 87. 25. Nottingham University Library, Nottinghamshire Archdeaconry Act Books: A24, January 1609; A36, July 1616; A39, June 1632. 26. Ibid., R6, fol. 505. 27. Printed in A.S.P. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty (London 1938), p. 456. He describes it simply as “The work of Ireton.”

290 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

Notes Ibid., pp. 458–459. Ibid., p. 458. Quoted for instance by David Underdown, Prides Purge (Oxford 1971), p. 9. In S. Forster, “The Presbyterian Independents Exorcised”, Past and Present 44 (1969), pp. 52–75. R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (London 1936); Hill, Society and Puritanism; W. Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (New York 1957); Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints, P. Collinson, The Religion of Protestants (Oxford 1982). N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists. As assimilated in Coward, Stuart Age, 2nd edn, p. 174. D. Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion and Fire from Heaven (Yale 1992); Hunt, The Puritan Moment. D. Cressy,Bonfires and Bells (London 1989), p. 35. S.B. Jennings, “The Gathering of the Elect in 17th century Nottinghamshire”, PhD thesis (Nottingham Trent 1999). Ibid., pp. 36–38. Ibid., p. 39. Ibid., p. 74. The revisionist line of argument opened with the suggestion that James’s famous outburst “No Bishope, No King,” was just the product of a misunderstanding: M. Curtis, “The Hampton Court Conference and its aftermath”, History 46 (1961), pp. 1–16. “Basilikon Doron”, in C.H. McIlwain, Political Works of James 1st (Harvard 1918), pp. 23–24. Coward, The Stuart Age, 2nd edn, p. 132. Jennings, “Gathering of the Elect,” pp. 82–85. N. Tyacke, Anti-Calnivists; A. Foster, “Church Policies of the 1630s,” in Conflict in early Stuart England, ed. R. Cust and A. Hughes (London 1989). C. Cross, Church and People: 1450 to 1660 (London 1976), p. 175. These aspects of the story are dealt with in K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London 1971), pp. 576–584. R.A. Marchant, Puritans and the Church Courts in the Diocese of York (London 1960), p. 29. K. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor: The episcopate of James 1st (Oxford 1990), p. 291. S. Harsnett,A Discovery of the Fraudulent Practices of J. Darrell, BL 719d.7, pp. 14–15. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., p. 147. J. Darrell, The Trial of Maister Darrell, BL 1606/316, p. 60. Harsnett, Discovery, p. 147. Ibid. Ibid., p. 146. Darrell, Trial, p. 13. Harsnett, Discovery, p. 14. Ibid., p. 147. The Song is printed in C.J. Sisson, Lost Plays of Shakespeare’s Age (Cambridge 1936), pp. 196–202. TNA Stac. 8/303/8 (1617–1621).

Notes

291

62. Nottinghamshire University Library, Archdeaconry Act Book, A34, 16 November 1615; A27(1), 20 June 1618. 63. Ibid., A34, 18 November 1615. 64. Ibid., A34, 28 September 1615. 65. Jennings, “Gathering of the Elect”, p. 77. 66. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, pp. 89, 297. 67. Nottinghamshire University Library, Archdeaconry Act Book, A24, 1 October 1607. 68. Ibid., A23(1), 8 May 1613. 69. Ibid., A34, 29 October 1614. 70. Ibid., A27, 2 July 1618. 71. Ibid., A27, 16 October 1619. 72. Ibid., A44, fol. 231, September 1637. 73. Ibid., A44, fol. 2, September 1635. 74. Ibid., A45, fols 78, 132. 75. Ibid., A44. fol. 7, September 1635. 76. Ibid., A47, fol. 38. July 1639. 77. Ibid., A24, 8 December 1607. 78. Ibid., PB 294, 17 May 1606. 79. Ibid., A24, 22 October 1607. 80. Ibid., A22(2), 12 October 1612. 81. Ibid., A16, 31 January 1609. 82. Nottinghamshire Archives, Transcripts of Archdeaconry Registers, M 463, p. 428. 83. Nottinghamshire Archives, PRNW, 26 October 1668. 84. Hutchinson, Life, pp. 30, 57–58. 85. R.T. Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (Oxford 1979). 86. P. Lake, “Calvinism and the English Church 1570–1635”, Past and Present 114 (1987), pp. 32–76. 87. The quotations from Hildersham and Bradshaw are in Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism, pp. 89–92. 88. Nottinghamshire Archives, PRNW, 16 November 1669. 89. Ibid., PRNW, 20 September 1648. 90. The Pocket Book of John Hooper, Nottinghamshire Archives, M381a, p. 104. 91. Ibid., p. 128. 92. Ibid., pp. 110, 118. 93. Hill, Society and Puritanism, pp. 30–37. 94. C. Cross, Church and People, 1450–1660, pp. 135–180. 95. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, p. 203. 96. Marchant, Puritans and the Church Courts, p. 63. 97. Jennings, “Gathering of the Elect”, p. 107. 98. Nottinghamshire Archives, Archdeaconry Transcripts, M463, p. 515. 99. Ibid., p. 524. 100. Nottingham University Library, Archdeaconry Act Book, A45, fols 169–170. 101. Cross, Church and People, pp. 176–177. 102. D. Hirst, Authority and Conflict (London 1986), p. 249. 103. Hutchinson, Life, p. 100. 104. Ibid., p. 203.

292

Notes

8 Statute law and Civil War: “A right that induced men to fight” 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies (Oxford 1991), p. 262. J. Rushworth, Collections (London 1659–1701), vol. 4, p. 172. See above, p. 163. N. Carlin, The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford 1999), p. 162. A good analysis of the interaction between rumour and politics, and Pym’s role, is in Anthony Fletcher, The Outbreak of the English Civil War (London 1981), esp. pp. 125–145. S.R. Gardiner (ed.), Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution (Oxford 1968), p. 222. Even less revisionist figures, like Derek Hirst, can refer to it as “this conservative parliament”: England in Conflict (London 1999), p. 167. L. Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1641 (Oxford 1965), pp. 112, 190. J. Rodgers, Sherwood Forest (London 1908), p. 143. Some details of Pierrepont’s landholdings are to be found in BL, Egerton Mss. 3516, 3536, 3562; and Nottinghamshire Archive, DDP, DD4P, DD44. The Verney Memoirs, ed. Frances Verney (London 1907), vol. 1, 392. D. Brunton and D.H. Pennington, Members of the Long Parliament (London 1954), pp. 9–10. VCH Shropshire, vol. 3, p. 109. Carlin, Causes of the English Civil War, p. 99. CSP. Dom., 1637–1638, p. 423. D. Hirst, Authority and Conflict (London 1986), p. 179. Carlin, Causes of the English Civil War, p. 102. Hirst, Authority and Conflict, p. 178. VCH Shropshire, vol. 3, p. 249; Letters of Lady Brilliana Harley, ed. T.T. Lewis (Camden Society 1854), p. 86; Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society, 4th series, vol. xi, pp. 168–169. J. Rushworth, Historical Collections, 7 vols (London 1659–1701), vol. 4, p. 21. L. Hutchinson, Life, ed. J. Hutchinson (London 1846), p. 118. Private Journals of the Long Parliament, ed. V. Snow and A. Young (New Haven 1982), vol. 1, p. xxii. “Notebook of Sir John Northcote”, in Two Diaries of the Long Parliament, ed. A.H.A. Hamilton (London 1877), p. 44. Gardiner, History of England (London 1883–1884), vol. 8, pp. 279–280. Ibid., p. 278. Above, pp. 23, 71. The Journal of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, ed. W. Notestein (Yale 1923), p. 169. Rushworth, Collections, vol. 4, p. 325. Ibid., p. 326. Ibid. Ibid. See above, pp. 55–57. W. Cobbett, Collection of State Trials (London 1809–1828), vol. 2, pp. 482– 486; Speech on the Triennial Act, BL, E196/6. “It is fit and just that every man do join in making that which shall bind and govern him; and because every man cannot be personally present, a

Notes

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

293

representative body is made to perform that service”: The Parliamentary Diary of Robert Bowyer 1606–7, ed. D.H. Willson (New York 1971), pp. 258–259. Rushworth, Collections, vol. 4, pp. 201–202. Hutchinson, Life, p. 118. For instance, Hirst, Authority and Conflict, pp. 195, 201. Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, ed. W.D. Macray, 6 vols (Oxford 1958), vol. 1, p. 343. The Journal of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, ed. W. Notestein, pp. 188–189(n). T. Bailey, Annals of Nottinghamshire (London 1863), vol. 2, p. 648. For instance, in Lord Digby’s speech on the third reading: Rushworth, Collections, vol. 4, pp. 145–149. CSP. Dom., 1641–1643, p. 277. Private Journals of the Long Parliament, ed. V. Snow and A. Young, vol. 1, p. 76. Ibid., p. 105. Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, vol. 1, p. 444. Diary of Walter Yonge, BL, Add. Ms. 18,777, fols 4, 21; Private Journals of the Long Parliament, vol. 1, pp. 360, 384, vol. 2, pp. 119, 343, vol. 3, pp. 145, 284. A letter from divers knights and gentlemen of Nottinghamshire, BL, E 154 (45), pp. 3–6. Hutchinson, Life, p. 117; A.C. Wood, Nottinghamshire in the Civil War (Oxford 1937), p. 50. Hutchinson, Life, pp. 149–150. Ibid., p. 136. And in contrast to William’s reputation for wisdom, Henry’s intellectual activities seem to have aroused a certain amount of scorn. In a quarrel in 1660, Lord Roos mocked him for his pretensions to every known kind of intellectual qualification: “Can any be bound in honour to fight a monster with so many heads?” CSP. Dom., 1659–1660, p. 375. Lords Journal (London 1767), vol. 4, pp. 508–509; Private Journals of the Long Parliament, vol. 1, p. 41. Old Parliamentary History of England (London 1751), vol. 9, pp. 287, 322. M. Jansson (ed.), Two Diaries of the Long Parliament (Yale 1984), p. 47. Gardiner, History of England, vol. 10, p. 209. J.L. Sanford, Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion (London 1858), p. 535. Diary of Walter Yonge, BL, Add. Ms. 18,777, fol. 66. Ibid., fol. 157. Sanford, Studies and Illustrations, p. 571. V. Pearl, “The Royal Independents in the English Civil War”, TRHS, 5th series, vol. 18 (1968), pp. 69–96. The middle group was first identified by J.H. Hexter, The Reign of King Pym (Harvard 1941). B. Whitelocke, Memorials of English Affairs (London 1733), p. 69. Clarendon, The Life of Edward Clarendon (Oxford 1759) vol. 3, pp. 10, 15. Diary of Walter Yonge, BL, Add. Ms. 18,778, fol. 84. Ibid.,777, fol. 113. Pierrepont bemoaned the influence of the “serpent of popery” in Ireland, “where no minister of the Gospel can safely reside”. Treatise on Ireland, BL, Add. Ms. 4777, fol. 72.

294 66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

71.

72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

79. 80. 81.

82. 83. 84.

85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

Notes The Verney Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 305. Whitelocke, Memorials of English Affairs, p. 77. See above, pp. 152–154. Hirst, Authority and Conflict, p. 249. Good analyses of the balance of Scottish aims are in V. Pearl, “The Royal Independents in the English Civil War”, TRHS, 5th series, vol. 18 (1968), pp. 69–96; Hirst, Authority and Conflict, pp. 248–257. C. Holmes, in The Eastern Association (Cambridge 1975), provides an invaluable analysis of the basis of these permutations, and a model study of the interaction between local and central affairs. CSP Dom., 1644, p. 136; 1644–1645, p. 273. Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, vol. 3, p. 497. Whitelocke, Memorials of English Affairs, p. 130. Ibid., p. 120. The Answer of the Lords and Commons to the Commissioners of Scotland, BL, E811 (2), pp. 43–44. Ibid., pp. 61–66. For a good analysis of the endurance and eventual break down of the Middle Group/Independent alliance see D. Underdown, Prides Purge (Oxford 1971), pp. 71–97. B. Coward, The Stuart Age, 2nd edn (London 1994), p. 228. I. Gentles, “The Arrears of Pay of the Parliamentary Army”, B.I.H.R. 1975. J. Morrill, “Mutiny and discontent in English provincial armies 1645–1647”, Past and Present 56 (1972). M. Kishlansky, The Rise of the New Model Army (Cambridge 1979), pp. 150–156. Kishlansky’s view that there was nothing really new or partisan about the New Model has since been tempered by I. Gentles in The New Model Army (London 1991). Hirst, Authority and Conflict, pp. 271–273. S.R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War (London 1893–1903), vol. 3, pp. 219–220. A good account of the Peace Party/Presbyterian campaign against the political influence of the generals is in A. Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen (London 1987). A City Petition, BL, E366 (14); Moderate Intelligencer, 31 December 1646, BL, E370 (19). Underdown, Prides Purge, p. 178. The Essex Petition, BL, 669 f10 (119). Quoted in H.N. Brailsford, The Levellers and the English Revolution (Nottingham 1983), p. 39. The Kingdom’s Weekly Intelligencer, BL, E381 (9). Vindication of the Officers, BL, E385 (19). Apology of the Soldiers to their Officers, BL, E381 (18). For instance, A. Woolrych, “The Debates from the Perspective of the Army”, in The Putney Debates of 1647, ed. M. Mendle (Cambridge 2001), p. 57. Gardiner, History of the Civil War, vol. 3, pp. 223–224. Ibid., p. 229. Ibid., p. 231. A.S.P. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty (London 1938), pp. 401–402. Ibid., pp. 403–407.

Notes 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105.

106. 107.

9

295

Underdown, Prides Purge, pp. 81–83. Putney Projects, BL, E421 (19), p. 43. Gardiner (ed.), Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, pp. 316–326. Ibid., p. 316. The Clarke Papers, ed. C.H. Firth, Camden Society, New Series 49 (1891), pp. 267–268. Ibid., pp. 325–327. E. Ludlow, Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, ed. C.H. Firth (Oxford 1894), vol. 1, pp. 206–207. This is rather missed in a recent reassessment of Ireton’s role by B. Taft: “From Reading to Whitehall”, in The Putney Debates, ed. M. Mendle (Cambridge 2001), p. 193. Her somewhat vague description of his desire for “a shift of power to a restricted parliament”, fails to capture the essential dynamic of his parliamentarianism, which was based on the perception of representative legislation as the supreme power, creating a trust that had to be renewed by certain and successive elections, and underpinning the demand for parliament to have a guaranteed place at the centre of the polity. J.A.W. Gunn, Politics and the Public Interest in the Seventeenth Century (London 1969), pp. 12–14. The Clarke Papers, ed. C.H. Firth, p. 389.

The sovereignty of parliament 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Yonge’s Diary, ed. G. Roberts (London 1848), pp. 4, 9, 19, 20. W. Yonge, A Justice of the Peace: his Vade-Mecum (London 1642). Yonge’s Diary, ed. G. Roberts, p. 84. Ibid., p. 51. Ibid., p. 76. The Journal of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, ed. Coates (Yale 1942), pp. xxxi, 312n. Walter Yonge. Notebook of Parliamentary Precedents, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Hist. G. 19. Ibid., fol. 3. Ibid., fols 3–8, 10, 14, 19. Ibid., fols 16, 20, 22. Ibid., fols 15–16. Ibid., fol. 35. Commons Journal, 3, p. 569. Yonge, Notebook, fols 3, 26–27. Ibid., fol. 40v. Ibid., fol. 48. Ibid., fol. 49. Ibid., fols 59–60. Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, ed. S.R. Gardiner (Oxford 1889) pp. 335–345. D. Underdown, Prides Purge(Oxford 1971), p. 88. The Hamilton Papers, ed. S.R. Gardiner, Camden Soc. NS. 27 (1880), pp. 174, 191. Underdown, Prides Purge, pp. 76–172.

296

Notes

23. Ibid., pp. 95, 105. 24. Ibid., pp. 112, 133. (Charles told a Royalist conspirator that he had agreed only to gain time in order to effect his escape.) 25. G. Burnet, History of his Own Time (London 1724), vol. 1, p. 44. 26. B. Whitelocke, Memorials of English Affairs (London 1733), p. 347. 27. Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, ed. W. Abbot (Harvard 1937), vol. 1, p. 677. 28. Underdown, Prides Purge, pp. 115–116. 29. Ibid., p. 121. 30. Ibid., pp. 148–149. 31. Mercurius Pragmaticus, 14–21 November 1648, BL, E 473 (7), 11 November. 32. Ibid., 17 November. 33. Underdown, Prides Purge, p. 120, n. 34. 34. Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, ed. W. Abbot (Harvard 1937), vol. 1, p. 690. 35. Ibid., p. 695. 36. Ibid., p. 696. 37. Underdown, Prides Purge, p. 150. 38. Independency Stript and Whipt, 12 December 1648, BL, E476 (11). 39. The Remonstrance of the Army, November 1648, BL, E473 (11) p. 7. 40. Ibid., p. 8. 41. Ibid., p. 12. 42. Ibid., pp. 27–29. 43. Ibid., pp. 12–13. 44. Ibid., p. 31. 45. Ibid., p. 16. 46. Ibid., pp. 14–15. 47. Ibid., pp. 15–16. 48. Ibid., pp. 23–25. 49. Underdown, Prides Purge, pp. 119, 128–129. 50. Whitelocke, Memorials of English Affairs, p. 362. 51. Ibid., p. 373. 52. J. Rushworth, Collections (London 1659–1701), vol. 7, p. 1355; Underdown, Prides Purge, p. 390. Yonge died in November 1649. 53. CJ, 6, pp. 110–111. 54. S.R. Gardiner, History of the Civil War (London 1893–1903), vol. 4, p. 290. 55. Sir Thomas Smith, De Republica Anglorum, edM. Dewar(Cambridge 1982),p.78. 56. Rushworth, Collections, vol. 4, p. 325. 57. Walter Yonge’s Notebook of Precedents, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Hist. G19, fols 48–49. 58. The Clarke Papers, ed. C.H. Firth, vol. 1, pp. 267, 326; Puritanism and Liberty, ed. A.S.P. Woodhouse (London 1938), p. 406. 59. Underdown, Prides Purge, p. 165. 60. Ibid., p. 183, n. 25. 61. The Clarke Papers, ed. C.H. Firth, vol. 2, pp. 163–165. 62. B. Coward, The Stuart Age, 2nd edn (London 1994), p. 236; B. Worden, “Providence and Politics in Cromwellian England”, Past and Present, 109 (1985), pp. 55–99. 63. S. Kelsey, “The Trial of Charles 1st”, English Historical Review, 118 (2003), p. 614.

Notes 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

10 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

297

Ibid., pp. 592–594. Ibid., p. 592. Ibid., p. 602. Continuation, BL, E539 (15), p. 5. The Clarke Papers, ed. C.H. Firth, vol. 1, p. 326. L. Hutchinson, Life, ed. J. Hutchinson (London 1846), p. 305. B. Worden, The Rump Parliament (London 1974), p. 179.

Epilogue: “A parliamentary man” Rodgers, Sherwood Forest, p. 155. Worden, Rump Parliament (London 1974), p. 278. Bodleian Library, Clarendon MS, vol. 43, fol. 345. CSP. Dom., 1655–1656, p. 80. B. Whitelocke, Memorials of English Affairs (London 1733), p. 656. O. Cromwell, Writings and Speeches, ed. W. Abbot (Harvard 1937), vol. 4, p. 394. J. Thurloe, Collection of State Papers, ed. T. Birch (London 1742), vol. 6, p. 37. Writings and Speeches, ed. W. Abbot, vol. 4, p. 667. The attempts to put Cromwell’s regime on a more constitutional basis have been well dealt with recently by C. Durston, Cromwell’s Major Generals (Manchester 2000), though Pierrepont by definition remains a background figure in that analysis. B. Coward, The Stuart Age, 2nd edn (London 1994), pp. 255–256. J. Adamson, “Viscount Lisle’s Lieutenancy in Ireland”, in Ireland from Independence to Occupation 1641–1660, ed. J. Ohlmeyer (Cambridge 1995). BL, Add. Ms. 4777, fols 45–85. Ibid., fols 47–51. For Pierrepont’s views on Ireland, see also, HMC Ormonde, vol. 2, pp. 87–88. Writings and Speeches, ed. W. Abbot, vol. 4, p. 818. Clarendon State Papers, 3 vols (Oxford 1767), vol. 3, p. 441. Ibid. L. Hutchinson, Life, ed. J. Hutchinson (London 1846), pp. 377–378. Ibid. Clarendon State Papers, vol. 3, p. 686. Ibid., p. 693. Ibid., p. 701. Ibid., p. 705. BL, Egerton Ms. 7986. Hutchinson, Life, pp. 419–420. J.R. Jones, Country and Court (London 1978), pp. 25, 157–158. G. Burnet, History of His Own Time (London 1724), vol. 1, p. 267. Jones, Country and Court, p. 103.

Appendix 1: Thomas Hobbes and the idea of the representative 1. T. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. M. Oakeshott (Oxford 1951), intro., p. viii. 2. C.B. Macpherson, Possessive Individualism (Oxford 1962), p. 65.

298 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Notes T. Hobbes, Behemoth, ed. F. Tonnes (London 1889), p. 4. J. Rushworth, Collections (London 1659–1701), vol. 4, p. 326. T.Hobbes,Leviathan,ed.C.B.Macpherson(Harmondsworth1968),intro.,p.20. Ibid., p. 22. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. M. Oakeshott, p. 122. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. M. Oakeshott, pp. 121–123. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpherson, intro., pp. 55–57.

Appendix 2: Dartmouth’s parliamentary diary from the impositions debate of 1610 1. Devon Record Office, Dartmouth Borough MS. DD67723. Brackets and italics mark supplementary phrases, suggested on the basis of other evidence or other versions of the debate. 2. William Jones was the member for Beaumaris. The speech is dated from Sir Richard Paulet’s Diary, Hampshire RO, Jervoise Ms. 44M69/F2/15/1, fol. 34: “Then Mr Jones began argument upon impositions.” 3. This apparently equated to Paulet’s Diary, fol. 34: “showing that the king neither by the common law nor by statute yet had prerogative to impose any new imposition but such as old had been accustomed because no man’s goods can be taken away but by his consent”. 4. Sir Henry Montague, Recorder of London, had argued on 23 June that impositions were an inheritance of the crown, because they were merely an increase of customs. 5. Parliamentary Debates 1610, ed. S.R. Gardiner, Camden Society 1st series 81 (London 1861), p. 64, has – “that he may restrain for the good of the commonwealth and dispense; but to take a sum of money for a dispensation he cannot”. That is, he cannot take money for allowing trade. 6. This seems to refer to 15 Ed.3 St.3 c.5 (whereas Debates 1610 has St.2 c.2). Paulet’s Diary, fol. 34, omits “paying the ancient custom”. 7. The phrase in Dartmouth appears to be “and future”, possibly referring to a sequence of statutes. 8. This seems to refer to the “freedom of merchants” clause in 28 Ed.3 c.13. This is cited but not quoted by Paulet’s Diary, fol. 34. It declares that merchants shall bring goods to whatever port they like; and on arrival none “shall meddle with the sale of such merchandise, nor disturb the merchants, nor their servants”. 9. Both Debates 1610 (p. 64) and Paulet’s Diary, fol. 34, have some parts of this section. 10. The interpretation of this passage must be regarded as speculative. But it is only possible to make sense of Dartmouth at this point by importing the meaning of what appears to be the equivalent passage in Debates 1610, p. 64: “Objection – inconvenient if foreign princes do impose, if our king may not. Solution – he may stay for a parliament, which is at his pleasure”. 11. Debates 1610, p. 64, amplifies this in the form of an objection – “divers impositions laid by the merchants without parliament, and they are no corporation. So it is the imposition of the king, and not the grant of the merchants”. It then begins the answer – “the merchants did grant and when they saw the mischief ” Dartmouth appears to complete this in its next entry.

Notes

299

12. Paulet’s Diary, fol. 34, has – “no man will think the k may impose upon any man’s goods upon the land but by act of parliament”. 13. Completed from Debates 1610, p. 66, as are the two succeeding passages. 14. This is somewhat cryptic. Both Debates 1610 and Paulet’s Diary state simply that Bacon is taking his stand on a universal negative; that is, that there had never been a judgement against the king’s right. 15. Bacon went on to say – “if unlawful, determined in courts of justice; if lawful, but grievances, then in parliament”. Dartmouth apparently had no wish to record this restriction of parliament’s role. 16. John Hoskins was MP for Hereford. He was a persistent opponent of the court, and classed (with Nicholas Fuller) as one of the “wild” members. Also like Fuller, he was a staunch supporter of free trade. 17. This is somewhat speculative, and depends on the assumption that the only passage to which Dartmouth can equate at this point is Paulet’s Diary, fol. 35, concluding, “escuadge is inheritance but never set but by act of parliament”. 18. This seems to equate to the passage in Paulet’s Diary, fol. 35, where Hoskins gives the example of common benefit as “maintenance of the ports”. 19. This (see Debates 1610, p. 75) refers to the “affeers” who were appointed in court leets to assess amercements on those who had “committed faults arbitrarily punishable, and have no express penalty set down by statute”. (It was a quote from Cowell’s “Interpreter”.) 20. This is the meaning gleaned from the equivalent passage in Debates 1610, p. 75, and Paulet’s Diary, fol. 35. It is not otherwise readily intelligible in the Dartmouth version. 21. Debates 1610, p. 75, has “Jeffrey’s case proves an imposition may be made when the Common Law gives authority.” 22. Debates 1610, p. 75, has “General and common customs are but the common laws of England. So if it may be proved by the Common Law that the king may impose, then that argument is of weight.” 23. Again, Dartmouth can only be made sense of at this point by importing the meaning from Paulet’s Diary, fol. 35: “And to them that say there is no judgement given against the king for impositions is no good argument, for in 11 Henry 4, judgement given yet void by excess, for neither a judge or jury can guess the gain of a merchant by reason of his adventure.” 24. This is presumably the same point derived rather more clearly from the speech of William Jones. See above, n. 11. 25. This refers to 12 Henry 7 cap.6 – an act to reduce the fine charged by the London Merchant Adventurers for the freedom to buy and sell in Flanders (“for their singular profit and lucre”). 26. Hakewill was the MP for Mitchell, in Cornwall. He had a growing reputation as a constitutional lawyer, and his speech was widely circulated. He himself had it reprinted in an extended version in 1641, as reproduced in Cobbett’s State Trials, vol. 2, pp. 407–476. 27. This probably refers to 38 Ed.3, which is a grant of a subsidy on wool for three years. Paulet’s Diary, fol. 36, has – “E3, a loan upon merchandise. And where a subsidy was there was never demanded an imposition.” But Dartmouth also seems to be incorporating 4 H 5, cited in Debates 1610 at this point – “a gift of tonnage and poundage on condition that no other impositions be charged”.

300

Notes

28. This seems to relate to Debates 1610, p. 81 – that these are matters covered by “act of parliament, Magna Carta, the statute general. A beneficial law. All merchants.” 29. Bacon had said – “Those statutes of tonnage and poundage are cumulative, not privative. A grant of poundage on denizens and aliens. If that statute did stint the customs, the 3d per librum should not be paid by aliens.” Debates 1610, pp. 68, 82. 30. This refers to 27 Ed.3 cap.26. Debates 1610, p. 82, has – “Objection: the 3d per librum continues still upon strangers. Solution: the decree of the commisioners in 5 [Ed.] 2 condemned to. In 27 E3, cap.26, this Carta Mercatoria was confirmed by Act of Parliament.” Hakewill’s point is that this is authorised by parliament. 31. Debates 1610, p. 82, has – “He may restrain upon some occasions to some places, where wars are. Nay he may restrain all the merchants and all the men, as upon the death of the late Queen, yet may not impose. Though he may shut up the gates of London for a time, yet he may not impose such as go through. But he cannot restrain all merchants from going to all places at all times.” 32. Debates 1610, p. 82, has – “King Henry 7th, a frugal prince: prolling officers: yet He did not impose without Act of Parliament.” 33. Debates 1610, p. 83, has – “King Henry 8th, sent out commissioners to demand the 6th part of all men’s goods. And therefore if he had power to impose he would be sure to have used it.” Dartmouth seems to have recorded Hakewill’s speech, albeit in this rather sketchy fashion, to the end, and thus to the end of the day’s debate. 34. Whitelocke was MP for New Woodstock. His speech is placed here in the position accorded it in most sources – such as Debates 1610, pp. 103–109, and Paulet’s Diary, fol. 39, which both have him opening the renewed debate on 2 July, though Dartmouth places it after Finch and Brooke, and does not attribute it to Whitelocke at all! As with Hakewill, Whitelocke’s comments were regarded as of special constitutional interest, and the speech was reprinted in Cobbett’s State Trials, 2, pp. 477–520. He spent much of the early part of the speech outlining his concept of mixed sovereignty, where the king is at his most absolute in parliament. (Well captured in Paulet’s Diary, fol. 39.) Dartmouth seems to have made no attempt to record this important moment, but picks up the speech about three-quarters of the way in, with the discussion of the statute of 14 Ed.3 (Debates 1610, p. 107), on the right of paying no more than the ancient custom. 35. Probably refers to St.1, cap.21, in which parliament agrees restrictions on wool exported, as long as imposed with consent. 36. Whitelocke is explaining the phrase “custom, subsidy and other profits” in 14 Ed.3, St.2, cap.2. “He hath other profits, tonnage, mesnage, which may well supply those words.” Debates 1610, p. 107. 37. Debates 1610, p. 107, has – “that all merchants, denizens as well as aliens may sell and buy all manner of merchandise and freely carry out of the realm, paying customs thereof due”. This attributed to 38 Ed.3, cap.2. 38. This refers to cap.8, which provides that denizens are to pay customs as strangers, and “a table to be set up in all customs’ houses, that nothing be exacted more than of old time”. Debates 1610, p. 107.

Notes

301

39. This is an example of impositions being redressed after complaint in parliament, as in 21 Ed.3. “Against impositions without consent of parliament.” Debates 1610, p. 108. 40. This refers to an instrument of 31 Ed.3. Though Debates 1610, p. 108, has 31 Ed.1. 41. This equates to Debates 1610, p. 108 – “His letters to the Archbishop, they were onera ex presumptione, not de jure: impositions not duly made.” 42. Debates 1610, p. 108, has – “never any qualification of any imposition, but absolutely taken away in toto, as for tonnage and poundage, by which the king had £100 per annum”. 43. Debates 1610 cites 27 H.6 cap.2, which says that since the customs revenue from Calais had fallen because of licences to ship staple merchandise to other places – “all licences to export wool or woolfell to any other place but Calais shall be void”. 44. There is no obvious indication as to where these words might have led. 45. Whitelocke is countering the argument that when Edward 3rd agreed to cease impositions at parliament’s bidding, he did not need the money anyway, because of the customs of Calais. Whitelocke says that 27 H 6 cap.2, “proves the contrary; for at that time it was but £12,000”. He added that since the king was £400,000 in debt at the time he clearly did need the impositions. Debates 1610, p. 108. 46. 27 H 6, cap.2, says – “the king’s revenue from the staple at Calais had decreased from £68,000 to £12,000, because of licences to ship merchandise to other places, and of several frauds committed in the exporting of such merchandises”. 47. This is obscure. Possibly relates to “kintlage”, or ballast. 48. Debates 1610, p. 108. 49. Debates 1610, p. 109, has – “He may restrain the person if he will attempt anything against the realm: but the persons of merchants are free.” 50. Owen was MP for Shropshire. He was apparently the fifth speaker on 2 July, following Whitelocke, Sir Walter Cope, Laurence Hyde and Dudley Carlton. Owen spoke against impositions, but the bulk of his speech was devoted to a survey of comparisons from classical and modern history, none of which seems to have caught the attention of the Dartmouth diarist. The speech is recorded from where Owen is producing precedents not generally available in print. Debates 1610, p. 115. 51. Debates 1610, p. 115, adds – “because it could be claimed of right, it might tend to the overthrow of the subjects”. This record is from 5 Rich. 2 (not Henry 2 as margined in Dartmouth). 52. Debates 1610, p. 115, has – “to the end it be not drawn into prejudice”. 53. This is obscure. The only clue is in Paulet’s Diary, fol. 41: “such privy seals were nether good by the law of nations, nether by jus majestatis, nor jus publicans”. 54. Heneage Finch was MP for Rye, and a rising lawyer. He seems to have been the seventh speaker on 2 July, following Richard Gore. Dartmouth gives considerable space to Finch’s contribution, much more than it received from either Debates 1610 or Paulet’s Diary. But there is an extended version of it in BM Add. Ms. 48,119, fol. 66 (reprinted by Foster, ed. Proceedings in Parliament 1610, 2, p. 225.)

302

Notes

55. According to Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 225, Finch began by trying to “single” the question, and excluding consideration of whether the king has power to levy impositions on land, or on goods carried from port to port, or in time of war, or for a limited time, or whether he has power to alter the law. 56. Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 226, has – “but the question is whether the king may by law lay a voluntary imposition at his will and pleasure upon merchandise”. 57. This was the principal question for Finch. Did the king have such a power at common law? If not, the argument was settled, for no act of parliament gave him that power. 58. Dartmouth is apparently trying, or at least setting out to convey a difficult passage where Finch says he would lastly produce arguments “not fitted particularly to disprove the common law power of imposing, nor to prove some act of parliament hath bound that power, but whether it be that he had no such power at the common law or that the power be bound by act of parliament, to prove that super totam materiam he hath no such power now”. (Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 226.) 59. Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 226, has – “It was objected by Mr Attorney that the proof lies not on the king’s part for kings have such power if the law does not restrain it.” 60. Finch began, interestingly enough, from the notion that “each man by law hath propriety in his own goods against the king and all men else”. (Proceedings 1610, 2, pp. 226–227.) 61. It is not certain to what this passage relates, but Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 227, indicates two possibilities. (1) “For English merchants it was not only lawful for them to go without license at the common law as any other man might.” (2) “If the king had such power of restraint at the common law yet by many acts of parliament that power of restraint is given away.” 62. This is rather misleading. Dartmouth has telescoped a passage where Finch is repeating Bacon’s argument in order to reject it. “The argument can at best be put thus, the king may restrain all merchants upon some occasion for a certain time, ergo, he may impose during that time cessante causa etc. and a perpetual imposition out of a temporary power of restraint is a child not like the father.” (Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 228.) 63. Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 228, has “may he therefore take money to let the land alone?” 64. Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 229. 65. The only passage to which this can relate is Finch’s conclusion against Yelverton, that – “none of these considerations of policy do enforce a necessity that the king should therefore have power to impose without parliament”. Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 230. 66. Bate’s Case. 67. Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 230. 68. Finch had just asserted that it was at least as likely that customs began by act of parliament, and went on – “parliaments are as ancient as the law and a part of the fundamental constitutions of the common law”. (Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 231.)

Notes

303

69. Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 234, has – “And yet out of the duty which I owe to my profession and for the honour of the common law, I will take liberty to speak something of this kind of power and prerogative.” 70. Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 234, has – “I will not deny the distinction of the two powers in the king, a limited power and an absolute. I say it is an absolute power not of will but of reason, not assumed but allowed, not above the law but by law it is the highest prerogative of the king that he cannot do against law.” These somewhat vague discussions of how far the king was subject to the law serve to underline the practical and radical force of the more politicised concept that Fuller and Whitelocke were working towards – where the king was at his most absolute within parliament because it was there that the sovereign power of making law was exercised. 71. He went on to say that even “in this supreme point the law stands not at a gaze but is able to define what shall be called war at home or war abroad”. (Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 235.) This is illustrated by 9 E 4, Hil. Pl.6, a reference which is also margined by Dartmouth. 72. Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 236, has – “the power of the king to protect him that is in his service from actions is a royal prerogative, yet such as the common law judges of and in some cases bounds and a protection for 3 years was disallowed”. 73. He concluded – “and yet by order and disposition of the law the queen shall not have dower”. (Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 236.) 74. Finch is seeking to show that every aspect of the king’s power is drawn from the law, by citing a legal decision of 1 Eliz.1 Mich., that “the successor king might write the beginning of his reign the day that his predecessor died”. (Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 237.) 75. Finch concluded that “the law hath not in that point yielded to him an absolute power”. (Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 237.) 76. Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 237, has – “But admitting the king had power to impose at the common law, that power is restrained by many acts of parliament.” 77. Maletolt – an unjust or burdensome tax. Finch is trying to show that the promise not to impose applies to merchandise as well as land. He cites 25 Ed.1 cap.6, which concludes – “we at their request have duly released it, and have granted we shall not take such things without their common consent”. Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 239. 78. Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 247, has – by “two statutes of 14 Ed.3 he took that imposition by grant of parliament for two years, and bound himself never to lay more without parliament”. 79. It is difficult to relate this passage to anything in the other versions of the speech, but it is obviously quite important. Finch seems to be saying that he would like them to actually pass a statute to deny the king impositions, but he recognizes that they might have to settle for a personal undertaking from his majesty. 80. Christopher Brooke was MP for York. He was another staunch constitutionalist. He probably spoke immediately after Finch on 2 July, though it is also possible that he spoke on the following day (see Proceedings 1610, 2, p. 249). The only extended version of his speech appears to be in Debates 1610, pp. 116–118. Dartmouth gives us just the opening statement of the

304

Notes

argument, and a single sentence summary of Brooke’s general opinion. The entry in the Dartmouth Diary that appears to follow on from Brooke is in fact Whitelocke’s speech, which this transcript has placed in the more usual accepted order, as above (p. 274). It should be said again however, that the order and dates of these speeches are very uncertain, and it is not impossible that the sequence in Dartmouth is the correct one. 81. Debates 1610, p. 116. 82. Presumably this is a reference to Doddridge’s speech of 29 June, though there is no mention of it in Debates 1610. The latter does however confirm that Brooke was firmly against the king in this respect. (Doddridge held essentially that the king’s right to impose derived from his right to restrain.)

Bibliography Manuscript sources Devon record office 1579A. Totnes Borough Archives. DD 61,615–67,991, SM 1989, 2004. Dartmouth Borough Archives. 60c, 60d (L206–361). Exeter Corporation Archives. Devon Parish Registers.

West Devon record office W11, 48, 152. Plymouth Corporation Archives.

Somerset record office D/B/bw. Bridgewater Borough Archives. DD/Ph. Papers of Sir Robert Phelips. DD/L, DD/L/P. Luttrell Manuscripts. Somerset Parish Registers.

Hampshire record office 44M69/F2/15/1. Jervoise of Herriard Ms. Sir Richard Paulet’s Diary, 1610.

Bristol record office AC/C48. Smyth of Long Ashton Manuscripts. 36,074/139b. Bridgewater Borough Correspondence.

National library of Wales 9057E, 9058E. Wynn of Gwydir Manuscripts.

Nottinghamshire record office CA3379–3402. Nottingham Corporation Archives. PRNW. Nottinghamshire Wills. M381a. John Hooper’s Pocket Book. DDP, DD4P, DD44. Pierrepont Manuscripts. DD/E. Edge Family Manuscripts. DD/Ch. Charlton Family Manuscripts.

Nottinghamshire Parish registers M463. Transcripts of Archdeaconry Registers.

Nottingham University library A24–A47, R6, PB294. Nottinghamshire Archdeaconry Act Books. 305

306

Bibliography

Bodleian library, Oxford University English History Ms. G19. Walter Yonge’s Notebook. Clarendon Manuscripts, vol. 43.

University library, Cambridge Dd, 12–20,21,22. Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke, 1626.

British library Add. Ms. 4777. A Treatise on Ireland. Add. Ms. 18,777–18,780; 35,331. The Diaries of Walter Yonge. Add. Ms. 18,597. The Diary of Sir Walter Earle, 1624. Add. Ms. 48,119. The Yelverton Manuscripts. Harleian Ms. 6383. The Diary of John Holles, 1624. Harleian Ms. 6787. A Letter of the Duke of Buckingham. Egerton Ms. 3516, 3536, 3562, 7986. Pierrepont Manuscripts.

The national archive E178 (1994). E179. Subsidy rolls and lists of lenders. E190. Port Books. Prob.11. Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills. SP14. State Papers Domestic, James 1. SP14/166. Edward Nicholas, Diary of Proceedings in the House of Commons, 1624. SP16. State Papers Domestic, Charles 1. SP16/30, 33, 36, 55, 78. Collection of the Forced Loan in Nottinghamshire and Devon. SP 24. Parliamentarian Petitions. Sp 28. Parliamentarian Committee Accounts. Stac.8. Star Chamber cases, James 1.

Tracts British library E154 E196 E366 E370 E381 E385 E381 E419 E421 E473 E473 E476

(45), Letter of the Nottinghamshire Gentry. (6), Lord Digby’s Speech on the Triennial Bill. (14), A City Petition. (19), Moderate Intelligencer. (18), Apology of the Soldiers. (19), Vindication of the Officers. (9), The Kingdom’s Weekly Intelligencer. (1), A City Petition, December 1646. (19), Putney Projects. (7), Mercurius Pragmaticus, November 1648. (11), The Remonstrance of the Army, November 1648. (11), Independency Stript and Whipt, December 1648.

Bibliography 307 E476 (20), An Answer to a Remonstrance, London 1948. E523, Diurnal Occurences, February 1641. E539 (15), Continuation. E811 (2), The Answer of the Lords and Commons to the Commissioners of Scotland. The Essex Petition, 669 f10 (119)

Printed primary sources Acts of the Privy Council (APC), ed. John Roche Dascent, London 1890. Bodin, Jean. The Six Books of the Commonwealth, ed. M.J. Tooley, Oxford 1955. Bowyer, Robert. The Parliamentary Diary of Robert Bowyer 1606–7, ed. D.H. Wilson, New York 1971. Burnet, Gilbert. History of His Own Time, London 1724. Calendar of State Papers Domestic, London 1857–1947. Chamberlain, John. The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. N.E. McClure, Philadelphia 1939. Clarendon, Earl of, Clarendon State Papers, Oxford 1767. ——, History of the Rebellion, ed. W.D. Macray, Oxford 1958. ——, Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, Oxford 1759. The Clarke Papers, ed. C.H. Firth, Camden Society, New Series 49, 1891. Cobbett, William. Complete Collection of State Trials, London 1809–1828. Commons Debates 1621, ed. W. Notestein, New Haven 1935. Commons Debates 1628, ed. R.C. Johnson et al., New Haven 1977. Commons Debates 1629, ed. W. Notestein and F.H. Relf, Minneapolis 1921. The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, ed. S.R. Gardiner, Oxford 1968. The Court and Times of James 1st, ed. T. Birch, London 1848. Cromwell, Oliver. Writings and Speeches, ed. W. Abbot, Harvard 1937. Darrell, J. The Trial of Maister Darrell, 1599, BL 1606/316. Devon Monastic Lands, ed. J.A. Youings, Devon and Cornwall Record Society 1955. D’Ewes, Simonds. The Journal of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, ed. W. Notestein, Yale 1923. ——. The Journal of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, ed. W.H. Coates, Yale 1942. Drake, William. “Notebook”. In Two Diaries of the Long Parliament, ed. M. Jansson, Yale 1984. Filmer, Robert. Patriarcha, ed. P. Laslett, Oxford 1949. Fortescue, Sir John. The Difference between Dominum Regale and Dominum Politicum and Regale, London 1714. Hamilton Papers, ed. S.R. Gardiner, Camden Society, New Series 27, 1880. Harley, Lady Brilliana. Letters, ed. T.T. Lewis, Camden Society 1854. Harsnett, Samuel. A Discovery of the Fraudulent Practices of John Darrell, 1599, BL 719d.7. Historical Manuscript Commission (HMC), Exeter; Salisbury; Ormonde; 5th Report. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan, ed. M. Oakeshott, Oxford 1951. ——. Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpherson, Harmonsworth 1968. ——. Behemoth, ed. F. Tonnes, London 1889. Holles, John, Earl of Clare. The Letters of John Holles, ed. P.R. Seddon, Nottingham, Thoroton Society 35, 1983.

308

Bibliography

Hutchinson, Lucy. The Life of Lucy and John Hutchinson, ed. J. Hutchinson, London 1846. James 1, The Political Works of James VI and I, ed. C.H. McIlwain, Harvard 1918. Journals of the House of Commons, London 1742. Journals of the House of Lords, London 1767. Ludlow, Edmund. The Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, ed. C.H. Firth, Oxford 1894. Nicholas, Edward. Proceedings and Debates in the House of Commons 1620–1, Oxford 1766. Northcote, Sir John. “The Notebook of Sir John Northcote”. In Two Diaries of the Long Parliament, ed. A.H.A. Hamilton, London 1877. ——. “The Notebook of Sir John Northcote”. In Two Diaries of the Long Parliament, ed. M. Jansson, Yale 1984. Nottingham, Records of the Borough of Nottingham, ed. W.H. Stevenson and J. Raine, London and Nottingham 1889. Old Parliamentary History of England, London 1751. Parliamentary Debates of 1610, ed. S.R. Gardiner, Camden Society, 1st series, 81. London 1861. Private Journals of the Long Parliament, ed. V. Snow and A. Young, New Haven 1982. Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ed. E.R. Foster, New Haven 1966. Proceedings in Parliament 1614, ed. M. Jansson, Philadelphia 1988. Proceedings in Parliament 1625, ed. M. Jansson and W.B. Bidwell, Yale 1987. Proceedings in Parliament 1628, ed. Johnson, Keeler, Cole and Bidwell, New Haven 1977–1983. Puritanism and Liberty, The Army Debates 1647–9, ed. A.S.P. Woodhouse, London 1938. Rushworth, John. Historical Collections, London 1659–1701. St German, Christopher. Doctor and Student, ed. T.F.T. Plucknett and J.L. Barton, Seldon Society 91, 1974. Sisson, C.J. Lost Plays of Shakespeare’s Age, Cambridge 1936. Smith, Sir Thomas. De Republica Anglorum, ed. M. Dewar, Cambridge 1982. Statutes of the Realm, London 1810–1828. Thurloe, John. Collection of State Papers, ed. T. Birch, London 1742. Two Diaries of the Long Parliament, ed. M. Jansson, Yale 1984. Venetian Ambassador. “Letters”. In The English Civil War, A Contemporary Account, London 1996. The Verney Memoirs, ed. F. Verney, London 1907. Victoria County History. Somerset, Dorset, Devon, Nottinghamshire, Shropshire. Walker, Clement. The History of Independency, London 1661. Whitelocke, Bulstrode. Memorials of English Affairs, London 1733. Yonge, Walter. The Justice of the Peace his Vade-Mecum, London 1642. ——. The Diary of Walter Yonge, ed. G. Roberts, Camden Society 41, London 1848.

Theses S.B. Jennings, “The Gathering of the Elect in 17th Century Nottinghamshire”, PhD thesis, Nottingham Trent, 1999. C. Stone, “Devon and Parliament in the Early Stuart Period”, PhD thesis, Brryn Mawyr, 1986.

Bibliography 309

Secondary sources Allen, John W. English Political Thought 1603–1644, Hamden, Connecticut 1967. Anderson, Perry. In the Tracks of Historical Materialism, London 1983. Appleby, Andrew B. “Agrarian capitalism or seigneurial reaction?” American Historical Review 80, 1975. Ashton, Robert. The English Civil War: Conservatism and Revolution, London 1978. Bailey, T. Annals of Nottinghamshire, London 1863. Barthes, R. “The Discourse of History”. In Post-Structuralism and the Question of History, ed. D. Attridge, Cambridge 1987. Beier, A.L. “Engine of Manufacture: The Trades of London”. In London 1500–1700, ed. Beier and Finlay, London 1986. Black, J.B. The Reign of Elizabeth, Oxford 1959. Brace, Laura. The Idea of Property in Seventeenth Century England, Manchester 1998. Brailsford, H.N. The Levellers and the English Revolution, Nottingham 1983. Brenner, Robert. Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550–1653, Cambridge 1993. Briggs, R. Early Modern France, Oxford 1977. Brunton, D. and Pennington, D.H. Members of the Long Parliament, London 1954. Burgess, Glenn. Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution, Yale 1996. Butterfield, H. The Englishman and his History, London 1944. Carlin, Norah. The Causes of the English Civil War, Oxford 1999. Carlton, Charles. Charles 1st, The Personal Monarch, London 1995. Carr, E.H. What is History? London 1961. Cliffe, J.T. The Puritan Gentry: The Great Puritan Families of Early Stuart England, London 1984. ——. Puritans in Conflict, London 1988. Clifton, Robin. “The Fear of Popery”. In The Origins of the English Civil War, ed. Russell, London 1973. Cogswell, Thomas. The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War 1621–1624, Cambridge 1989. Collinson, Patrick. The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559– 1625, Oxford 1982. Cope, Esther. Politics Without Parliaments, London 1987. Corfield, Penelope. “Urban Development in England and Wales in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries”. In The Tudor and Stuart Town, ed. Barry, London 1990. Coward, Barry. The Stuart Age, Three editions, London 1980, 1994, 2003. Cresswell, B. The History of the Weaver’s Company, Exeter 1930. Cressy, David. Bonfires and Bells, London 1989. Croft, P. “Annual Parliaments”. Bulletin of The Institute of Historical Research, 59. Cross, C. Church and People: 1450 to 1660, London 1976. Cust, Richard. “Charles 1st and the Forced Loan”, JBS 24, 1985. ——. “Charles 1st, the Privy Council and the Forced Loan”, JBS 25, 1982 ——. The Forced Loan and English Politics: 1626–1628, Oxford 1987. Cust, Richard and Huhges, Ann (eds). Conflict in Early Stuart England, London 1989. Curtis, M. “The Hampton Court Conference and its aftermath”, History 46 (1961). De Vries, Jan. European Urbanization: 1500 to 1800, London 1984.

310

Bibliography

Dean, D. Law-making and society in late Elizabethan England, Cambridge 1996. ——. “Parliament and Locality”, In The Parliaments of Elizabethan England, ed. Dean, Oxford 1990. Dias, J. “Lead, Society and Politics in Derbyshire before the Civil War”, Midland History 51, 1981. Dobb, Maurice. Studies in the Development of Capitalism, London 1963. Durston, C. Cromwell’s Major Generals, Manchester 2000. Eley, Geoff and Hunt, William (eds). Reviving the English Revolution: Reflections and Elaborations on the Work of Christopher Hill, London 1988. Elton, Geoffrey. “A High Road to Civil War?” In From the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation, ed. Carter, London 1966. ——. The Parliament of England, Cambridge 1986. ——. The Practice of History, London 1969. ——. Reform and Reformation, London 1977. ——. “The Triumph of Parliamentary Law”. In The Parliaments of Elizabethan England, ed. D. Dean, Oxford 1990. Evans, Richard J. In Defence of History, London 1997. Everitt, Alan. The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion, Leicester 1966. Fincham, K. Prelate as Pastor: the Episcopate of James 1st, Oxford 1990. Finlayson, Michael. Historians, Puritanism and the English Revolution, Toronto 1983. Fisher, F.J. “London as an Engine of Economic Growth”. In Britain and The Netherlands, ed. Bromley and Kossman, London 1971. Fletcher, Anthony. A County Community in Peace and War: Sussex 1600–1660, London 1975. Fletcher, Anthony. The Outbreak of the English Civil War, London 1981. Foster, Andrew. “Church Policies of the 1630s”. In Conflict in Early Stuart England, ed. R. Cust and A. Hughes, London 1989. Forster, S. “The Presbyterian Independents Exorcised”, Past and Present 44, 1969. Foucault, M. The Archaeology of Knowledge, London 2002. Foucault, M. Power/Knowledge, New York 1981. Gardiner, Samuel Rawson. History of England 1603–1642, London 1883–1884. ——. History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, London 1903. ——. History of the Great Civil War, London 1893–1903. Gentles, I. “The Arrears of Pay in the Parliamentary Army”, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 1975. ——. The New Model Army, London 1991. Gray, Todd. “Fishing and the Commercial World of Early Stuart Dartmouth”. In Tudor and Stuart Devon, ed. T. Gray, M. Rowe and A. Erskine, Exeter 1992. Gunn, J.A.W. Politics and the Public Interest in the Seventeenth Century, London 1969. Guy, J. Tudor England, Oxford 1988. Haller, William. The Rise of Puritanism, New York 1957. Hassell-Smith, A. County and Court: Government and Politics in Norfolk, 1558–1603, Oxford 1974. Hexter, J.H. Reappraisals in History, London 1961. Hexter, J.H. The Reign of King Pym, Harvard 1941. Hill, Christopher. The Century of Revolution, 1603–1714, London 1961. ——. The English Revolution 1640, London 1955.

Bibliography 311 ——. Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution, Oxford 1965. ——. Puritanism and Revolution, London 1958. ——. Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England, London 1964. Hirst, Derek. Authority and Conflict, England 1603–1658, London 1986. ——. England in Conflict, London 1999. ——. “Freedom, Revolution and Beyond”. In Parliament and Liberty from the reign of Elizabeth to the English Civil War, ed. Hexter, Stanford 1992. ——. The Representative of the People? Voters and Voting in England under the Early Stuarts, Cambridge 1975. Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Extremes, London 1994. Holmes, Clive. The Eastern Association, Cambridge 1975. Hoskins, W.G. The Age of Plunder, London 1976. Hughes, Ann. The Causes of the English Civil War, Basingstoke 1991. ——. Politics, Society and Civil War: Warwickshire 1620–1660, Cambridge 1987. Hunt, William. The Puritan Moment: The Coming of Revolution in an English County, Harvard 1983. Jenkins, Keith. Rethinking History, London 1991. Jones, J.R. Country and Court, London 1978. Judson, Margaret A. The Crisis of the Constitution, London 1949. Kelsey, S. “The Trial of Charles 1st”. English Historical Review 118, 2003. Kendall, R.T. Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649, Oxford 1979. Kennedy, M. “Legislation, Foreign Policy, and the ‘Proper Business’ of the Parliament of 1624”. Albion 3, no. 1, 1991. Kerridge, E. Agrarian Problems in the 16th Century, London 1969. Kerridge, E. Textile Manufactures in Early Modern England, Manchester 1985. Kishlansky, Mark. Parliamentary Selection: Social and Political Choice in Early Modern England, Cambridge 1986. ——. The Rise of the New Model Army, Cambridge 1979. Lake, Peter. “Calvinism and the English Church 1570–1635”. Past and Present 114, 1987. Lamont, William. Puritanism and Historical Controversy, London 1996. Lockyer, R. The Early Stuarts, London 1989. Macaulay, Lord Thomas Babington. The History of England from the Accession of James 2nd, London 1913. MacCaffrey, W. Exeter 1540–1640, Harvard 1976. MacCaffrey, W. “Parliament and Foreign Policy.” In The Parliaments of Elizabethan England, ed. D. Dean and N. Jones, Oxford 1990. Macfarlane, Alan. The Origins of English Individualism, Oxford 1978. Macpherson, C.B. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, Oxford 1962. Manning, Brian. The English People and the English Revolution, 2nd edn, London 1991. Marchant, R.A. Puritans and the Church Courts in the Diocese of York, London 1960. Mendle, M (ed.). The Putney Debates: the Army, the Levellers and the English State, Cambridge 2001. Morrill, John “Mutiny and Discontent in English Provincial Armies 1645–1647”. Past and Present 56, 1972. ——. “The Religious Context of the English Civil War”. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 1984. ——. The Revolt of the Provinces, London 1980.

312

Bibliography

Neale, J.E. Elizabeth and her Parliaments, 2 volumes, London 1953. ——. The Elizabethan House of Commons, London 1949. Notestein, W. The House of Commons, 1604–1610, Yale 1971. F. O’Gorman, The Long 18th Century, London 1997. Palliser, D. The Age of Elizabeth, London 1983. Patterson, C.F. Urban Patronage in Early Modern England, Stanford, California 1999. Pearl, Valerie. London and the Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution, Oxford 1961. ——. “The Royal Independents in the English Civil War”. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 1968. Rabb, T.K. Enterprise and Empire: Merchant and Gentry Investment in the Expansion of England, 1575–1630, Harvard 1967. Reeve, L.J. Charles 1st and the Road to Personal Rule, Cambridge 1989. Richardson, R.C. The Debate on the English Revolution, London 1977. Rodgers, J. Sherwood Forest, London 1908. Ruigh, R.E. The Parliament of 1624, Harvard 1971. Russell, Conrad. The Fall of the British Monarchies, Oxford 1991. ——. “Parliamentary History in Perspective, 1604–1629”. History 61. ——. Parliaments and English Politics, 1621–1629, Oxford 1979. Russell, Percy. Dartmouth, Callington 1982. Sacks, David H. “The Corporate Town and the English State: Bristol’s ‘Little Businesses’ 1625–1641”. Past and Present 110, 1986. Sanford, J.L. Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion, London 1858. Schama, Simon. Citizens, London 1989. Sharpe, Kevin. The Personal Rule of Charles 1st, Yale 1992. Skinner, Quentin. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 volumes, Cambridge 1978. Smith, Alan. The Emergence of a Nation State, London 1984. Somerville, J.P. “Ideology, Property and the Constitution”. In Conflict in Early Stuart England, ed. R. Cust and A. Hughes, London 1989. ——. Politics and Ideology in England 1603 to 1640, London 1986. Spufford, Margaret. Contrasting Communities, Cambridge 1974. Stephens, W.B. “English Wine Imports, 1603–40”. In Tudor and Stuart Devon, ed. T. Gray, M. Rowe and A. Erskine, Exeter 1992. ——. Seventeenth Century Exeter, Exeter 1958. Stevenson, D. The Scottish Revolution, 1637–1644, Newton Abbot 1973. Stone, Lawrence. The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641, Oxford 1965. Stoyle, M. Loyalty and Locality, Exeter 1994. Supple, B.E. Commercial Crisis and Change in England 1600–1642, Cambridge 1959. Taft, B. “From Reading to Whitehall”. In The Putney Debates of 1647, ed. M. Mendle, Cambridge 2001. Tawney, R.H. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, London 1936. ——. “The Rise of the Gentry, 1558–1640”. Economic History Review 11, 1941. Thirsk, Joan (ed.). The Agrarian History of England and Wales, 1500–1640, Cambridge 1967. Thirsk, Joan. Economic Policy and Projects: The Development of a Consumer Society in Early Modern England, Oxford 1978. Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic, London 1971. Thompson, Christopher. “Court Politics and Parliamentary Conflict in 1625”. In Conflict in Early Stuart England, ed. R. Cust and A. Hughes, London 1989.

Bibliography 313 ——. “The Divided Leadership of the House of Commons in 1629”. In Faction and Parliament, ed. Sharpe, London 1985. Tite, C. Impeachment and Parliamentary Judicature in Early Stuart England, London 1974. Trevelyan, G.M. England under the Stuarts, London 1904. Tyacke, Nicholas. Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism, 1590–1640, Oxford 1987. Underdown, David. Fire from Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century, Yale 1992. ——. Prides Purge: Politics in the Puritan Revolution, Oxford 1971. ——. Revel, Riot and Rebellion, Oxford 1987. Unwin, G. Industrial Organization in the 16th and 17th Centuries. London 1957. Usher, R.G. “Nicholas Fuller: A Forgotten Exponent of English Liberty”. AHR 12. Walzer, Michael. The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics, New York 1966. Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London 1930. White, Peter. Predestination, Policy and Polemic, Cambridge 1992. Wilson, C. England’s Apprenticeship, 1603–1763, London 1965. Wood, Alfred. Nottinghamshire in the Civil War, Oxford 1937. Wood, Andy. “Beyond Post-Revisionism? The Civil War allegiance of the Miners of the Derbyshire ‘Peak Country” ’. Historical Journal 40, 1997. ——. “The Debates from the Perspective of the Army”. In The Putney Debates of 1647, ed. M. Mendle, Cambridge 2001. Woolrych, A. Soldiers and Statesmen, London 1987. Worden, B. “Providence and Politics in Cromwellian England”. Past and Present 109,1985. ——. The Rump Parliament, London 1974. Wormald, J. Court, Kirk and Community in Scotland 1475–1625, London 1981. Wrightson, Keith. English Society, 1580–1680, London 1982. Young, M.B. Charles 1, London 1997. ——. “Revisionism and the Council of War 1624–1626”. Parliamentary History 8, 1989. Zagorin, P. The Court and the Country, London 1969. ——. The History of Political Thought in the English Revolution, London 1965. Zaller, R. The Parliament of 1621, Berkeley 1971.

Index

Abbot, W.C., 247 absolute property concept of, 52–7, 214, 234–5, 265 act against dissolving the current assembly, 159, 215–16 Addled Parliament (1614), 86–7, 157 Agitators, 228, 231 Aldridge, John, (vicar of St. Mary’s, Nottingham), 191, 194 Anderson, Perry, 275 n.31 Apology of the Soldiers (March 1647), 227 Armada, Spanish, (1588), 79, 88–90, 98 Arminianism, 143, 183, 186–8 army plot, (1641), 216 Bacon, Sir Francis, Solicitor General, 63, 79 Bagshaw, Edward, MP, 171 Bailey, Thomas, 152, 216 Bancroft, Richard, Archbishop of Canterbury, 189, 190–2, 201 Baptists, 199 Barnstaple, Devon, 109, 115, 120, 147, 179 Barthes, Roland, 8 Basilikon Doron, 188 Bate, John, merchant of London, 60–1, 67, 78 Bedford group, 172 benevolences, (1614, 1622 and 1626), 106 Bere Alston, Devon, 151 Berkeley, Sir Robert, judge, 212–13 bishops legislation against, 166, 171, 207, 220, 222, 244–5 Bodin, Jean, 32, 173 Brace, Laura, 53, 56 Bradshaw, John, Lord President of the High Court of Justice (1649), 254

Bradshaw, William, 199 Brenner, R., 82–3, 141 Bridgewater, Somerset, 36, 89–92, 114–15 Bristol, 44, 82 British context, 22 Brooke, Christopher, MP, 81, 84 Brooke House Committee (1667), 263 Brooking, Christopher, MP, 25–6 Buchanan, George, 153 Bucking, Robert, MP, 89 Buckingham, Duke of, 98–9, 102–4, 128, 131–2, 136 Buckinghamshire election dispute (1604), 45–6 Burgess, Glen, 19 Burnet, Gilbert, 158, 161, 166 Byron, Sir John, 217 Cadiz, 101–2 Calvert, Sir Edward, 116 Calvinism, 153, 179, 182–4, 186, 188 canons (1640), 174 Carlin, Norah, 10, 18, 156, 208 Carr, E.H., 7–8, 14 Cecil, Robert, Earl of Salisbury, 27–8, 61 ceremonialists, 187, 190, 192–4, 201–2 charitable uses legislation for, 25–6 Charles I, 22, 98–9, 102–5, 131–45, 153–7, 161, 164–70, 176, 180, 207–8, 211, 213, 221, 223–4, 228, 230–1, 244–6, 249, 254–5 Charles II, 261–3 Cinque Ports, 119 City of London petition from, 236 Clarendon, Earl of, 83, 158–9, 170, 216, 218, 221, 223, 261–2 cloth industry legislation for, 35–6, 111–14 314

Index 315 Coates, George (vicar of St. Peter’s, Nottingham), 194–5, 203 cod fishing, 58, 79, 88, 115–16, 118 Cogswell, Thomas, 9, 18, 87 Coke, Sir Edward, MP, 100 Collinson, Patrick, 186 Commission of Array (1642), 218 Commons Declaration of Sovereignty (1649), 252–3 communion tables sitting of, 201–3 Cosin, John, 183 counter-revisionism, 6, 9, 18, 82, 149 Court of Wards abolition of, 55, 206, 244 Coward, Barry, 156, 274n.5 Cowell, John, 54, 73 Cressy, David, 187 Croft, Pauline, 163 Cromwell, Oliver, 253, 255, 258–60 Cromwell, Richard, 260–2 Cromwell, Thomas, 34 Cross, Claire, 190, 201, 204 Darrell, John, 190–2, 194–5, 199, 204–5 Dart, river of, 25, 43 Dartmouth, Devon, 27, 88–9, 94, 100, 102, 104, 110, 115, 118, 121, 129, 147, 265 and free trade, 57–60 and impositions, 60, 64–84 parliamentary franchise of, 45–8 politicisation of, 43–5, 51–2, 57, 60, 63–4, 66, 74, 81–4, 87 Dean, David, 20 deductive method, 11–14 Delbridge, John, MP, 109, 120 democratic franchise (debated 1647), 231–6 Derrida, Jacques, 275n.31 Devon, 1, 26, 111, 179–80, 184 and un-parliamentary finance, 106 D’Ewes, Sir Simonds, MP, 160, 162–4, 168–9, 220–1 Dias, Jill, 18 Digby, George, Lord, 158, 163–5, 171–2, 175, 207–8, 215 dissolution of the monasteries, 52

Divine Right of Kings concept of, 54–5, 71–3, 173–4, 267 Dorset, 57, 115 Dottyn, Walter, MP, 25–6, 89 Drake, William, MP, 169 Duck, Nicholas, MP, 124 Durston, Christopher, 297n.8 East Retford, Nottinghamshire, 93, 110, 129 Edwards, Thomas, 226 Eliot, Sir John, MP, 100, 132–3, 136, 142–3 Elizabeth I, 98, 101, 105, 260 Elton, Geoffrey, 9, 18, 30, 33–4, 274n.5 empiricism, 7–12, 14–16, 150 Essex petition from, (March 1647), 226 Essex, Earl of, 221, 223 Estates General of France, 157 Evans, Richard J., 9 Exeter, Devon, 44, 96, 101, 103–4, 106, 110, 117, 122–4, 129, 146–7, 181 and cloth legislation, 111–14, 123 legislation for, 26–8 weaver’s company of, 28 Fairfax, Thomas, General, 225, 227, 247 feudal tenure concept of, 53 Fiennes, Nathaniel, MP, 174, 230, 259 Filmer, Robert, 267, 280n.108 Finch, Heneage, MP, 57, 80–1 Finch, Sir John, judge, 212–13 Fincham, Kenneth, 195 five members (attempted arrest, January 1642), 217 Fleming, Sir Thomas, judge, 61, 71, 78 Fletcher, Anthony, 17, 83, 157, 292n.5 forced loan (1626), 106, 133 Fortescue, Sir John, 31, 69 Foster, Andrew, 189 Foucault, Michel, 7, 15–16 four bills (1648), 244 France, 102–4 free speech, 62–3, 97

316

Index

free trade, 27, 58–9, 115–17 Fuller, Nicholas, MP, 66–76, 78, 80–1 Gardiner, S.R., 22, 142, 154, 253, 274n.1 general assembly of the Scottish Kirk, 154 gentry and church lands, 52–3 involvement in trade, 50–1 and parliamentary franchise, 48–9 Giles, Sir Edward, MP, 50, 94, 110, 119, 136 Glanville, John, MP, 50, 115 Godliness character and contribution of, 179–205 Goodman, Christopher, 153 Gorges, Sir Ferdinando, 115–16 Gourney, Thomas, MP, 76 Grand Remonstrance (1641), 208, 250 Great Contract (1610), 54–5, 85 Grimston, Sir Harbottle, MP, 161, 163 Gunn, J.W., 235 Hakewill, William, MP, 28, 61, 75, 80 Haller, William, 186 Hammond, Robert, Colonel, 226, 247–9 Hampden, John, MP, 133, 212 Hampton Court (conference 1604), 189 Harrington, James, 178, 289n.2 Harrison, William, 53 Harsnett, Samuel, 183, 191–2, 195, 201, 204 Hawkins, Sir John, 89 Heads of the Proposals (1647), 230–1, 235, 244 Hedley, Thomas, MP, 79 Henderson, Alexander, 153 Henrietta Maria, 167 Henry VIII, 125, 173, 179 herring fishing, 29 Hexter, J.H., 293n.60 Hildersham, Arthur, 199 Hill, Christopher, 18, 55, 186, 201 Hirst, Derek, 20, 133–4, 159, 211

Hobbes, Thomas, 55–7, 64, 83, 214, 265–8 Hobsbawm, Eric, 4–5 Holland, Thomas, MP, 76, 89 Holles, Denzil, MP, 169, 220, 228 Holmes, Clive, 294n.71 Honiton, Devon, 239 Hooper, John, (engineer to Nottingham garrison), 200 Hoskins, John, MP, 72–3, 80, 84 Hughes, Ann, 9, 18, 21 Humble Answer of the Commons (1604), 45–6 Hutchinson, John, Colonel, 180, 198–9, 261–2 Hutchinson, Lucy, 152, 180–2, 198–9, 204, 212, 215–16, 262 Hyde, Sir Edward, 163–4 Ilchester, Somerset, 93, 124 impositions, 60–5, 109, 137–43 debate on (1610), 65–81 Independent/middle group alliance, 224, 230, 245, 258 Independents, 225–6 Interregnum, 205, 258–62 Ireland, 22, 228, 260 Ireton, Henry, 181–2, 184–6, 189, 199, 204, 209–10, 222, 224, 227–38, 244, 246–51, 253–6, 258 Irish rebellion (1641), 208, 217 Isle of Rhe, 102 Jackson, Anker, MP, 192–4 James I, 155, 157, 188–9, 212 James II, 263 Jenkins, Keith, 274n.15 Jennings, Stuart, 187–9 Jones, William, MP, 77, 80–1 Jourdain, Ignatius, MP, 96, 110, 122–3 Kelsey, Sean, 254 Kendall, R.T., 199 Kennedy, Mark, 18, 87 Kerridge, Eric, 53 king-in-parliament concept of, 30–1, 71 Kingston-on-Hull, 118, 147

Index 317 Kishlansky, Mark, 294n.81 Knox, John, 153 La Rochelle, 103 Laudians, 186–7, 189–90, 201–4, 222 lay preaching, 226 legislation demand for, 20–1, 24–30, 110–131, 172–6, 214–15, 257–8 scope of, 111–14 legislative sovereignty concept of, 13, 20–1, 23, 30–4, 69–71, 172–6, 214–15, 227, 232, 235, 241–3, 254, 257, 262–3 Levant Company, 60–1 Levellers, 225, 227, 230–3, 235–7 linen industry, 34 localism, 21 Locke, John, 55–7 London merchants of, 82–3 Ludlow, Edmund, MP, 158, 234, 252 Luttrell, George, 29, 38–42 MacCaffrey, Wallace, 90–1 Macpherson, C.B., 55–7, 214, 265, 268 Maidstone, John, 186 Manchester, Earl of, 223 Marchant, R.A., 202 Marshall, Stephen, 201 Marxist history, 3–5, 19, 82, 149 Mathew, Roger, MP, 102–3 May, Thomas, 180–1 Mendle, Michael, 232, 295n.105 merchants politicisation of, 74, 81–4 middle group (in the Long Parliament), 209, 221, 223, 230, 244 middling sort, 18, 180, 204, 208 Mildmay, Humphrey, MP, 163 militia control of, 217–18, 223, 231, 244, 245 Militia Ordinance (1642), 217–20 Minehead, Somerset, 29, 257 harbour dispute at, 38–40 parliamentary franchise of, 40–3

ministers control of, 170–2, 231, 245 Mompesson, Sir Giles, 109–10 Monck, George, General, 261 monopolies, 109–10, 121, 131 Montagu, Richard, 131, 183 Morrill, John, 156 multiple kingdoms, “problem” of, 22–3 Neile, Richard, bishop, 86, 201 Netherlands, 96, 98, 100 New Model Army, 181, 186, 224 politicisation of, 224–36, 245–6, 251, 261 Newcastle, 83 Newport talks at (1648), 245–6, 261 Norfolk politicisation in, 51, 57, 60 Notestein, Wallace, 152, 216 Nottingham, 110, 124, 180–1 parliamentary franchise of, 48–50 Nottinghamshire, 1, 13, 91–2, 124, 128, 152, 180, 182, 184, 187–205, 209, 218 non-conformity in the parishes of, 195–200, 202–3 politicisation in, 49–50 and un-parliamentary finance, 106–7 Nyell, William, MP for Dartmouth, 94–5, 100, 110, 115–16, 119, 121–2 and free trade, 58–9 Oxford talks at, 221 Palatinate, 87, 91–6, 98, 100–1, 105 parliamentary law triumph and supremacy of, 30–3 parliamentary liberties, 51, 59–60, 64 parliamentary opposition development of, 84, 86, 108–9, 110–1, 116–17, 119–20, 127–9, 133, 135, 144–5, 234, 257–8, 263–4 Paulet, Sir Richard, MP, 77

318

Index

Peace Party (in the Long Parliament), 220, 223, 225–6, 228, 249 Peace Party/Presbyterian alliance, 224–5, 228, 230 Pearl, Valerie, 159, 221 Personal Rule of Charles I, 133, 145–8 Petition of Right (1628), 106, 133, 136–41, 143 Pierrepont, Francis, 219 Pierrepont, Henry, 219–20 Pierrepont, Robert, Earl of Kingston, 48, 219 Pierrepont, William, MP, 33, 152, 204, 209–24, 229–30, 237, 244–6, 248, 250, 252–3, 256, 258–65 Plymouth, Devon, 111, 148 and free trade, 57, 115–16 Ponet, John, 153 Poole, Elizabeth, 254 possessive individualism concept of, 56 post-modernism, 8–9, 11, 15 predestinarian theology, 187, 190, 199 Presbyterianism, 222–3, 226, 246, 249 Prides Purge (1648), 252 progressive history, 2, 186 Protectorate, 259–60 Protestation of the Commons (1621), 97 Prowse, John, MP for Exeter, 27–8, 96, 101, 110–1, 122–3 Puritanism, 178, 222 character and contribution of, 179–205 Putney Debates (1647), 232–6 Pym, John, MP, 21, 133, 146, 158, 163, 175–6, 208, 215, 217, 250–1, 258

Rabb, T.K., 51 Rainborough, Thomas, 232–3 Reformation legislation, 30 Remonstrance of the Army, (1648), 184–5, 246, 248–51, 253 Representation of the Army, (1647), 229 republicanism, 17 Restoration (1660), 6, 262

revisionism, 2, 5–10, 15, 17–20, 82, 87, 90, 126, 133, 149–50, 170, 177–8 Revolution, English, (1641–9), 6, 10, 18–19, 177–8, 186, 210, 243–5, 248, 250–1, 253, 255–6, 262–3 Revolution, Glorious, (1688), 6, 263 Rich, Sir Nathaniel, MP, 93, 95, 100, 109–10, 121–2, 129–44, 174 Rudyerd, Sir Benjamin, MP, 158, 170–1 Rump Parliament, 258 Russell, Conrad, 18, 87, 95, 97, 102, 104, 121, 127, 133, 140, 153, 166, 274n.5 Russell, Percy, 88 St. Albans army council at, 246–7 St. German, Christopher, 31 St. John, Oliver, MP, 230, 259–61 Sandys, Edwin, Archbishop of York, 190 Sandys, Sir Edwin, MP, 23, 33, 51, 59, 62, 115–16, 119–20, 154, 215 Schama, Simon, 8 Scotland, 22–3 Scots, 222–4, 244–5, 258 Scottish Reformation, 188, 223 Scottish Revolution, 152–4, 182 Self-Denying Ordinance, 223 Sexby, Edward, 232 Seymour, Sir Francis, MP, 100, 163, 168 Sharpe, Kevin, 146 ship money, 211–13 Shropshire, 211 Skinner, Quentin, 153, 287n.14 Smith, Sir Thomas, 32, 36, 253 Smyth, Elizabeth, of Long Ashton, 135–6 Smyth, Thomas, MP, 135–6 soldiers Apology of, 227 petition of, 227–8 Solemn Engagement of the Army, (1647), 228 Solemn League and Covenant (1643), 222, 225

Index 319 Somerset, 1, 38, 89, 91–2 and un-parliamentary finance, 106 Somerville, J.P., 69 Song of the Puritans of Nottingham, 192–3 sovereignty concept of, 32, 71–3 Spain, 79, 83, 87–8, 90, 92–6, 98–101, 104–5, 260 Spanish Armada, 79, 88–90, 98 Spanish match, 88, 94, 98–9, 101 statutes of labourers, 36 Stevenson, David, 153, 223 Stoyle, Mark, 179 Strafford, Earl of, 163 Strode, William, MP, 143–4, 151–2, 160–1, 163, 170, 175, 216–17, 238–9 structuralism, 19 subsidy bill (1641), 160–1, 168–9, 216 Taft, Barbara, 295n.105 Tawney, R.H., 186 Thompson, Christopher, 132, 144 Thoresby, in Sherwood, 210, 258 Thurloe, John, 259–61 tonnage and poundage, 137–43 Totnes, Devon, 24, 89, 93–4, 110, 119, 257 almshouse people of, 25 and free trade, 57 legislation for, 24–6 towns politics of, 12, 81–4 Trevelyan, G.M., 98 Triennial Act (1641), 148–77, 206–7, 215–17, 229–31, 234, 239, 251, 258, 262 Tyacke, Nicholas, 183, 186, 189

Underdown, David, 245 Upton, John, MP, 47 Uxbridge talks at, 223 Vane, Henry, MP, 230, 240, 245 Venetian ambassador reports from, 167–8 Vote of No Addresses (1648), 244, 248 Wales, 124–5 Walker, Clement, MP, 158 Walzer, Michael, 153, 186, 287n.14 War Party (in the Long Parliament), 221 Warre, Roger, MP, 114 Whig interpretation, 2, 5–6, 8, 19, 87, 149 Whitelocke, Bulstrode, MP, 252 Whitelocke, James, MP, 33, 62, 70–1, 80–1, 84, 215 Wilson, Charles, 50 wine trade, 104 Withington, William, 193–4 Woolrych, Austin, 293n.84, 293n.92 Worcester, (battle, 1651), 258 Wrightson, Keith, 50, 53–4 Wyn, Richard, MP, 93, 124–5 Yelverton, Henry, MP, 46 yeomanry rise of, 54 Yonge, Walter, MP, 36–7, 93, 97, 101–2, 106, 125–7, 174, 181–4, 189, 195, 210, 222 and the development of parliamentary sovereignty, 238–44, 251–3, 258 Zagorin, Perez, 289n.89 Zaller, Robert, 97

People and Parliament: Representative Rights and the English Revolution

The Minority Rights Revolution

The Rights Revolution: Rights and Community in Modern America

George Lawson's 'Politica' and the English Revolution

The English Parliament in the Middle Ages

George Lawson's 'Politica' and the English Revolution

Energy and the English Industrial Revolution

Scarlet and the Beast 02 - English Freemasonry and Revolution

Practice And Procedure Of Parliament

Revolution and Counter-revolution

Representative Man

History of the English People

The Representative of the People?: Voters and Voting in England under the Early Stuarts

Representative Men

Governor John Wentworth and the American Revolution: The English Connection

Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution

Justice and Grace: Private Petitioning and the English Parliament in the Late Middle Ages

The Parliament Of Fowles

The State and Revolution

People and Parliament in the European Union: Participation, Democracy, and Legitimacy

The Representative of the People?: Voters and Voting in England under the Early Stuarts

Intellectuals and the People

Intellectuals and the People

Intellectuals and the People

People and the State

Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen of the English Revolution

Representative Men

Representative Government

Representative Men

Representative Men

Representative Democracy

People and Parliament: Representative Rights and the English Revolution

The Minority Rights Revolution

The Rights Revolution: Rights and Community in Modern America

George Lawson's 'Politica' and the English Revolution

The English Parliament in the Middle Ages

George Lawson's 'Politica' and the English Revolution

Energy and the English Industrial Revolution

Scarlet and the Beast 02 - English Freemasonry and Revolution

Practice And Procedure Of Parliament

Revolution and Counter-revolution

Representative Man

History of the English People

The Representative of the People?: Voters and Voting in England under the Early Stuarts

Representative Men

Governor John Wentworth and the American Revolution: The English Connection

Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution

Justice and Grace: Private Petitioning and the English Parliament in the Late Middle Ages

The Parliament Of Fowles

The State and Revolution

People and Parliament in the European Union: Participation, Democracy, and Legitimacy

The Representative of the People?: Voters and Voting in England under the Early Stuarts

Intellectuals and the People

Intellectuals and the People

Intellectuals and the People

People and the State

Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen of the English Revolution

Representative Men

Representative Government

Representative Men

Representative Men

Representative Democracy

Recommend Documents