These chapters are dedicated to my dearest friend, Nemat Obayda, who passed away on 25/04/2022.
Your encouragement to write the History of the Civil War in England. I could not leave it unabridged; it has a beginning and an end, a cause and effect. So here it is in full, attributed to you.
The Stuart Dynasty.
To that end, together, we spent a beautiful, sunny day in Newbury, Berkshire, watching enactments of battles between the Roundheads (Cromwell's Model Army) and the Cavaliers (Royalists). We spent the day mingling with the ‘soldiers’ and some of the traders and stall holders, learning about the way of life back then. This is a story of one of the most influential centuries in English History. a sort of belated gratitude to a genuine friend I like to share with friends, after several years since that visit, that I can now tell from a distance.
Nemat, my dearest friend, when you crossed the great divide, you left behind a lot of love.
This is for you. Rest in Peace.
Some of the Characters in this story.
Queen Elizabeth (Protestant). Daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn (Protestant). Some consider Elizabeth an illegitimate daughter because Henry neither annulled nor divorced his first wife, Catherine of Aragon (Catholic). No such thing as Divorce in the Catholic church, and Annulment means never married. Pope Leo X, taken up with affairs at Avignon at the time, never granted either to Henry, who, having earlier taken the solemn Oath to defend the Catholic faith.
Mary Queen of Scots: Great-granddaughter of Henry VII.
Darnley: Queen Elizabeth's cousin and husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, and great-grandson of Henry VII. He was the Consort King of Scotland, not King in his own right, but as husband of Mary.
By the way, I believe, our King Charles III is a direct descendant of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Chapter I
A century of non-stop turbulence, a century of Drama, even Netflix can’t do better. It packed a lot in just over 120 years. Kings, Queens, Revolution, Religion, Adultery, Regicide, Murder, Executions, Monarchy, Republicanism, Massacres, War, and Internecine conflicts of one kind or another. The story I want to tell will unfold over ten long chapters. In fact, I begin with a brief visit to 1545, at the onset of the English Reformation, which ultimately led to the development of Anglicanism (Church of England, today, High Church) in England, and the Scottish Reformation, which ultimately led to the establishment of Presbyterianism, Calvinism, and the Covenanters (more on that later). I take my story all the way to 1688, the Glorious Revolution, and the Act of Settlement a little later. As we approach that period, we encounter numerous religious wars among all claimants to God’s chosen people, each asserting their claim to truth. An assumed Truth given by God to justify their killing one another in his name.
In terms of popularity, this chapter of English history is underrated, in my opinion, particularly in relation to the kings and Queens, which overshadow the Tudor period that preceded it and the Hanoverian period that followed. Where the Tudor period was mainly taken up by Henry VIII's marriages, and the Hanoverian period by mad George and the loss of the thirteen colonies, the body of this story is Religion.
Catholic, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland
So let me start with Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland. Mary was born at Linlithgow Palace to James V, King of Scots, and his French second wife, Marie de Guise (Catholic). At five years of age, the young princess was betrothed to Prince Edward VI, the son of Henry VIII of England. Mary’s mother will hear none of it, so she shipped the child to France, out of Henry’s reach, which meant Mary was brought up a Catholic. At the age of 15, she married Francis, the heir to the French Throne, who was 14 at the time, and later became King of France. That meant Mary was fortunate to be queen of France, England, Scotland, and by extension, Ireland. Quite a standing start, yet to think that she was later beheaded by her cousin Queen Elizabeth. Lamenting the unfortunate queen from such a promising start, only to later fall foul of such a sad end. Poor old Mary never had much luck in her short life; she took the wrong turn at every crossroads.
Mary, Queen of Scots
After a brief marriage, rumoured never to have been consummated, Mary’s French husband died, and his mother, Catherine de Medici, who never liked Mary, suspected the Guise nobility were always conniving after the French Crown. So, the question was, why would Mary stay when she was a Queen elsewhere, albeit with not as much luxury as the French Court could offer? She didn’t.
She returned to Scotland in 1561, by then a Protestant country. Mary Stuart ended up as the Catholic queen over a Protestant Scotland and presided over a protestant Parliament. In a modern take on things, she was quite tolerant of the religious situation, believing in religious plurality, so she wasn’t out to change the system. She married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, a charismatic, tall, and handsome man, but he later came to be seen as a shifty, untrustworthy figure. Soon after their wedding, he wanted to be King and wear the crown in his own right rather than remain as consort. She refused him that privilege. So he turned against her to the point that, when her son, James (later James VI of Scotland), was born, he never attended his son’s baptism, implying that James was not his son and therefore illegitimate. That was a lie, but it stuck as a stain on Mary’s character.
A couple of months later, Darnely’s castle caught fire due to a mysterious gunpowder plot. Mary was implicated with the murder of her husband, but no proof was ever produced in evidence. Inevitably, James, believing it to be true, disowned his mother, believing she was an adulteress and guilty of murdering Darnley, his father. In his younger days, James loved books, but his tutor, George Buchanan, was a hard man who hated Catholics, and Mary Queen of Scots, his mother, most of all. James grew up with his ears ringing with stories of his mother’s wickedness, inevitably growing up with a visceral hatred towards her. Buchanan thought she was a witch, a whore and a murderer.
The Protestant Parliamentary calm, however, did not last for very long; eventually, the Scottish elite turned against Mary’s Catholicism, chief amongst them being her protestant stepbrother. Eventually, she was forcibly removed as Queen of Scotland in 1567 and imprisoned immediately to be succeeded by her infant son, James VI, who was thereafter raised as a Protestant with no father or mother. She still had local supporters, and with their help, she managed to escape the castle where she was being held. She gathered an army composed of her Catholic supporters, with some French assistance, to regain Scotland. Unfortunately, Mary's forces were heavily defeated by the Earl of Moray, her half-brother and regent for her son James, at the Battle of Langside in 1568, forcing her to flee once again.
Woman to woman
She fled to England, believing that Elizabeth, a woman, would understand her situation and provide protection and support. She would have had a listening ear with Queen Elizabeth, but for a treacherous guy called Cecil, a Protestant, who had other ideas, unfortunately for Mary. After arriving in England in 1568 and seeking refuge, she was placed under house arrest in various locations for the next nineteen years. Yes, Cecil (William Cecil, Lord Burghley) accused Mary of plotting against Elizabeth, and he played a key role in building the case against her, producing nine letters incriminating Mary in a plot to kill her cousin. Cecil, as Elizabeth's chief minister, saw Mary as a serious threat due to her Catholic faith and her potential claim to the English throne since Catholics did not accept Henry VIII's dissolution of marriage from Catherine of Aragon, making Elizabeth an illegitimate daughter of his next wife, Anne Boleyn, who was later beheaded. Elizabeth was later declared a bastard by her own father in the Act of Succession. Yes, I know it gets complicated, but try to stay with it.
While incarcerated, Mary wrote numerous letters, most of which were coded. One of them stood out; in it, Mary wrote to Elizabeth that she would recognise her as the rightful queen of England if, in return, Elizabeth would name Mary as heir to the throne, provided that Elizabeth did not marry and have children. She also asked her if they could meet woman to woman away from these mischievous men who twist things to their advantage. Elizabeth seriously considered this offer, believing it to be very reasonable, but for one Cecil, whose primary business, other than seeing Mary as an obsession, is to protect England and its Protestantism. The religious divide he felt as heightened tensions, as Protestant England feared that Catholic powers, such as Spain or France, might support an invasion to install Mary as queen. Being Protestant, England could be a target, so security was important, which made Mary all the more dangerous. The meeting between the two queens, however, never materialised, while uneasiness continued as Mary ceaselessly plotted many schemes to unseat Elizabeth, which further aggravated Mary's position. England was a marginal power in Europe at this time. Not one of the big boys, or the main focus in Europe.
An explainer: Mary and Elizabeth were first cousins once removed through King Henry VII of England. Two of Henry VII’s eight children were Henry VIII Tudor and Margaret Tudor. Margaret went to Scotland and married James IV; their son, James V, had Mary with his second wife, Mary of Guise. Six days after Mary was born, King James V died, rendering her Queen of Scotland.
William Cecil
William Cecil: Secretary of State. He was the centre of power who ensured the Protestant religion prevailed in the country. He was a brilliant rhetorician in modern parlance, a master in the Art of Persuasion. Devious, using his brutality by all means at his disposal, while on matters he needed used his charm to the hilt. He built a network of informers and bribed Scottish officials to spy on Mary. He and Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's spymaster, actively sought evidence of the infamous Babbington Plot to implicate Mary against Elizabeth, in a conspiracy she was supposed to be plotting to encourage a Spanish invasion of England and Elizabeth’s assassination, thereby installing Mary as queen. That ultimately led to Mary’s execution. That so-called evidence, many would argue, was a forgery put together by Cecil.
After much heart-searching, Elizabeth, then residing at Richmond Palace, signed the order of Execution of her cousin, an anointed queen with a divine right to the throne, just as she herself was. By then, James, Mary’s son, also believing in the ‘evidence’ against his own mother, initially sided with Elizabeth. On hearing of the judgment passed and the sentence of death on his mother, he strongly objected to the possible execution. Elizabeth had, at the time, asked him What will you do, “to transform yourself to my state and suppose what you ought to do. She later disregarded his appeals to spare his mother.
Mary was arrested in September 1586 and held at Fotheringay Castle (near Peterborough, Cambridgeshire) until her trial. Convicted in 1586, sentenced to death, and executed in 1587 at the age of 44. She went down saying, “tell me friends that I die a true woman to my religion, and like a true Scottish woman, and a true French woman”. The Queen's small lap dog had refused to leave the dead corpse, but lay between her head and shoulders, dripping in blood. Before that, she had requested that, should she be executed, her body should be buried alongside her mother in the Convent of Saint-Pierre-les-Dames in Reims, France. Poor Mary, even that was denied her. She was laid to rest in Peterborough Cathedral, but later, in 1612, her son, King James I of England, had her body reburied in Westminster Abbey.
I developed a soft spot for Mary. Nothing was working for her, and without a father figure to lean on, she had no one to confide in or turn to for advice.
As one can imagine, Catholic Europe, France, Spain, and the Papacy were beside themselves. The Spanish Armada, by Philip II, who incidentally was now claiming to succeed Elizabeth on the English Crown, then followed. The claim was not new, as he had been granted the title ‘King of England’ by Parliament during his marriage to Mary Tudor, and in his own right, he had a Lancastrian lineage from Edward III.
If I pursue this line of history, in the run of things, this will become very messy, so I am quitting when I think I am winning. Therefore, I will not go that way for this story. After all, this episode marked not only the death of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland, but also the death of the Princess of Guise, Queen of France.
Elizabeth I, Queen of England.
In the background, it must be said, an element of jealousy was brewing, primarily coming from Elizabeth. Mary was tall (as all members of the Guise family), pretty, and cultured, very much a woman of the world, who spoke many languages and made decisions instantly. Whereas the English queen is short. 5’4”, not so attractive, and rather bookish, and took forever to make a decision, refused to be rushed or allowed Parliament to pressure her into any action. Another interesting point to consider regarding royalty at the time is that Mary’s status as a born sovereign, as a princess, and an anointed Queen should ensure that she remained exempt from human jurisdiction and subject only to the judgment of God, and that execution would be an offence to Christendom. The English remained undeterred, “mercy should not be extended to this enemy of our felicity.” Following Mary’s execution, it is said Elizabeth was enraged, rebuking her privy councillors, sending some court officials to the Tower of London, would not speak to Cecil for six months, and was reputed to have suffered a type of mental breakdown.
Queen Elizabeth, who never married, was very stubborn and never let on who she preferred to succeed her. In fact, whoever mentions any reference to succession is liable to be executed. That is despite her commitment in the Treaty of Berwick not to raise any objections to twenty-year-old James’s hereditary claim to the English throne on her death. Included in that treaty, by the way, what is called a league of Amity with England, which, in July 1586, had guaranteed Scottish neutrality should England be invaded by a foreign power, in return for James’s receipt of an English annuity of £4,000.
Despite her Catholic faith and the rejection of her Queenship, the crowds in Edinburgh were very angry, and one of Elizabeth’s courtiers visiting King James was refused entry to Scotland. James continued to refuse emissaries coming from Elizabeth, not knowing how sorry she was over his mother’s death, offering monetary compensation for her action. His anger assumed a greater dimension than at Elizabeth's funeral in 1603, when he remembered how his mother was put to death at the hands of the public executioner with “great disgrace and cruelty”. On the continent, she was named Jezebel, the wicked female ruler incarnate as an immoral heretic bastard responsible for Mary’s death. Avenge the killing was coming from Mary’s former brother-in-law, King Henry of France, as well as from Spain and the Papacy. Elizabeth was now convinced the Pope and the kings of Spain and France were in league to ruin her. All ports in England were closed for fear of invasion. But more importantly, there was the fear that the Guise family was encouraging the end of the Toleration of the Protestant Huguenots, which was likely to end in massacres.
Elizabeth died in 1603, and James VI of Scotland, as the next in line, became King of England as James I. It was a union of the crown, not of the Kingdoms. England and Scotland remained as separate kingdoms at this time. Unlike the Act of Union in 1707, under Queen Anne, the Kingdoms became united.
In the background
Protestantism in England: By the time of Edward VI, the only son of Henry VIII, Lutheran Protestantism had largely withered away; instead, a Geneva-type Protestantism, characterised by moderate Calvinism, had taken hold.
Protestantism in Scotland adopted a more radical form of Calvinism, known as Presbyterianism, which is based on the principle of presbytery, a ruling body that operates without bishops in its hierarchical structure.
Elizabeth became queen in 1558, after her Catholic half-sister Mary Tudor. A Conservative Protestant, who did not like rapid change.
England suffered from paranoia, always feeling threatened of being invaded. If not by Spain, then by France through the Guise family connection.
Chapter II
King James I of England and VI of Scotland
On 24 March 1603, Queen Elizabeth I of England died after a long reign, unmarried and childless. Her funeral was on the 28th of April, 1603, and accordingly, James, through his hereditary rights as next in line of succession, was on his way to London to take the throne of England as James I. At all costs, coming south, he avoided appearing in public; overnight, he stayed at the home of Oliver Cromwell, the uncle of the infant nephew who would sign the death warrant for the execution of James’s son, Charles. James was the King who united the crowns of England and Scotland, but not the two kingdoms. That was to come a century later. He was to rule over a divided Protestant church despite his efforts to unite the English church with the Kirk, the Scottish counterpart, through the King James Bible.
James made his way to England to take up his crown, but not before Elizabeth's body had been buried. That was the protocol, avoiding any act that might diminish the honour and dignity attaching to the English queen, so that English subjects could mourn their sovereign without conflicting loyalties. Despite the embittered feeling between the Scots and the English, it is surprising how swiftly and without much fanfare, the English crowd received their foreign king, certainly downplaying any signs of adoration. The English court that greeted the king, however, was full of suspicion and mistrust.
King James I, a Pius man and a staunch protestant, came to the throne of England at the age of 36, and had been married in 1590, to Anna, the sister of the Danish king Christian IV, with one son Henry, the King that never was, who unfortunately at the age of 18 died of illness after a swim in the Thames. James’s daughter, Elizabeth, married Frederick, Prince of a German Palatinate, later crowned King of Bohemia and Queen of Bohemia, but they were to suffer greatly at the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War of 1618. James also had his youngest son, Charles. Well, we all know what happened to him. He is, after all, the ultimate hero of our story. With the exception of a sickly disposition, he was left in Scotland; the entourage arrived at Windsor Castle with over 250 carriages and 5000 horses.
Anne of Denmark
James and Anna were crowned in Westminster Abbey on the 25th of July 1603. An occasion that prompted a massive gathering of foreign dignitaries from Spain, France, Venice, Savoy, the Dutch Republic, Poland, and from all across the German Palatinate, as well as representatives from Persia, all in the hope of gaining England's favour, each trying to secure the diplomatic initiative. James was often described as too passive, maybe even deceptive. His ideas were to preserve equilibrium between the European dynasties, giving them hope and no further. A rather indolent individual of inaction, promising little, he did nothing. After all, King James VI & I, the first British ruler of the Stuart Monarchy, which comprised England, Scotland, and Ireland, and indirectly France in his royal title. Indeed, the idea of Great Britain was his dream, which he hoped would take shape when he travelled across the island from Scotland to England in 1603.
He wished for a union of the two countries, their parliaments, national churches, and a single Protestant belief. Alas, such ideas were to remain elusive until the Anglo-Scottish union was negotiated in 1707 under his great-granddaughter Queen Anne. Unfortunately, at the time, influencers from both England and Scotland, as well as many Europeans, poured cold water on such ideas, especially given the traditions of mutual enmity and ill will that existed between the two peoples, and the fact that such an Anglo-Scottish connection was far too soon to be considered. As with joining the EU today, there was fear that there would be a loss of individual Scottish and English identities, laws, and influences, and above all, the loss of the Magna Carta and the burial of the honourable name of England, describing the two as “the golden beams of the sun for a cloudy day”. There was an argument about the design of the flag, the Union Jack (the name derived from Jacobus James) of Great Britain, regarding which of the crosses to take centre stage: the George Cross superimposed on the cross of St Andrew's, the Saltire, or vice versa.
To appreciate the Stuart Dynasty is to put Religion in the forefront and to understand the central role it played in the reign of James I, his son Charles I and his grandson Charles II. Religion, in many ways, affected politics and society across the three kingdoms: England, Scotland and Ireland. In this period, church and state were deeply intertwined. The monarch was expected to defend and uphold the “true religion”; each kingdom believed it held the true religion. Any hint of religious compromise could be seen as weakness or even treason. The legacy of Elizabeth did not bode well. Her legacy saw England as Protestant (Anglican), with Puritans hot on its heels to purify it and distance it from Catholicism and Popery. Scotland ended up with Presbyterianism (Calvinism), which clashed with English ceremonial episcopal Anglicanism while leaving Ireland predominantly Catholic but ruled by a Protestant elite, leading to constant tension and rebellion.
James’s argument was, “I will make them as one nation”, as the two countries are not separated by sea or great rivers; they were only divided by ideas rather than any effect, and not divided by nature. Citing Iberian parallels, with a country simply termed 'Spain' rather than the former kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal. Besides, for James, there was an added dilemma: how to govern Scotland independently of England while wearing different hats. More difficult is how to react to Spain, the Dutch, and France as King of Scotland, when one needs to adopt policies different from those emanating from being King of England. And what France and Spain expect from him as King of the two kingdoms. He was never to be granted that union.
By and large, James I was genuine in his efforts to unite the three churches of the three kingdoms. But he was walking on glass. On the one hand, how to deal with the Catholic minority without encouraging it in Ireland or upsetting Catholic Europe, rumoured to be at the point of invasion. James believed in religious uniformity under royal authority, but his dilemma centred on the fact that his Catholic subjects were tied to foreign powers like Spain and the Papacy. The next best thing he introduced was ‘Freedom of Conscience’, no prosecution for private belief, but that must be tied to the Church of England. In theory, Catholics are free to think what they like, but they must attend Anglican services. Those who refused (recusants) have to pay fines. In today’s world, this was not modern religious freedom — it was controlled toleration, subordinated to political loyalty.
The turning point was not far behind. More than anything, at this time, what destroyed any prospects of religious unity was the attempt to assassinate the King. Discovered on the night of the fifth of November, 1605, the Gunpowder Plot in effort to counter his Protestantism. There were thirty-six barrels of gunpowder about to explode that could have destroyed the entire wing of the House of Commons and would certainly have killed the King and his entire family. There followed the arrest of Catholic Guy Fawkes, hiding in the cellar, who later admitted that Jesuit priests put him up to this mischievous deed, angry that James had not relaxed the Elizabethan freedom of worship against Catholics despite his other tolerations.
James was beside himself; this incident dashed any hopes of further tolerance. The Oath of Allegiance followed in 1606, a political move which mainly denied the authority of the Pope. King over Papacy. As in the century that followed, religious belief was tolerated only so far as it did not challenge political authority. In return, the Pope issued a proclamation asking all Catholics in England to desist from swearing such an Oath. In retaliation, James barred all Catholics from living ten miles within London, and all Catholics remaining in England were to be identified as terrorists.
Here we have the seeds of religious diversity, which were to form the core of Charles I's rule.
By 1623, Prince Charles unexpectedly became heir to the Stuart thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland on Prince Henry’s death. Also by then, England was considering military intervention to oust the Catholic Spanish-led Habsburg troops that had occupied the Protestant Palatinate, where his sister and her husband, Frederick, a staunch Protestant, as I touched on earlier, had acquired the Crown as Queen and King of Bohemia. Both had fled to the Netherlands after losing a battle against Spain. An added complication here was that Charles had met the Spanish Infanta Maria Anna, the youngest daughter of King Philip III of Spain, a Catholic, whom he intended to marry. Raising the Spanish hope that Charles intends to convert to Catholicism significantly increases the chances of England and Scotland abandoning the Protestant heresy and removes the need for Papal dispensation for the marriage to take place, ending, of course, the Castilians' dislike of this heretic Prince. There was no point in letting the Infanta marry this heretic if there were not going to be improvements in the religious and political situation of Catholics in England and Scotland.
Perish the thought that the English public can possibly share such absurdities. Nevertheless, a betrothal between the two had been arranged, and a massive celebration was taking place in Spain. Among the presents the couple received were five camels and an elephant; these were shipped to England and kept at St James’s Park. Charles was never sure whether the Camels were a sign of confirmation of the tie or were instead a sign of the Infanta. The bombshell arrived when lovestruck Charles accepted the Pope’s dispensation, as well as the relaxing of the laws on Catholics. But the real bombshell was to follow. The Pope's dispensation included the requirement that Virginia (in America) and Bermuda be surrendered to Spain. Portsmouth, Plymouth and the Isle of Wight were garrisoned with Spanish soldiers; liberty of Conscious be imposed in England; a Jesuit college opened in England to educate the prince’s children; and, in one account, King Philip of Spain had also demanded Scotland and Wales in dowry. Hearing of this, King James nearly flipped and ordered his son to return to England immediately. Sign any treaties, but just come back. He did come back without the infanta.
Since we have Catholic Spain on our mind, here is how some in Spain observed Good Friday. It so happened, Easter, when writing this, not far behind us:
“Their heads and faces covered with ash; others with crowns of thorns and thistles, with much blood flowing from them, Others with ropes and chains around their bodies and necks, carrying crosses, with shackles and fetters on their feet, others entwined and tied up with ropes, others beating their chests with stones, and others with gags and bones of the dead in their mouths.” Extracted from ‘Devil-Land’ by Clare Jackson.
To mark Charles's return, huge festivities took place; church bells and bonfires were lit at Whitehall in celebration that he had come back on his own, and general rejoicing spread across London. While in Spain, a monument was erected extolling the glorious future of the England-Habsburg alliance, confirming the marriage. La Columna del Adios (The Column of Farewell) is a reconstruction of it, still standing in Madrid today. Ahead of the planned ceremony, the King’s Spanish court built decorative galleries, making all possible preparations for the marriage. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, they received a letter from the English royal court requesting a postponement of the marriage. This angered the Spanish, who considered it an insult; they dismantled all and wanted to cancel the marriage altogether, blaming England for the collapse of the Spanish match.
At the same time, England was demanding the restitution of Frederick and Elizabeth, but Spain, as well as the Pope, was demanding an exorbitant price for it. Primary demands for Catholic emancipation further insisted on Charles’s conversion to the Catholic faith. King James, on the other hand, was slowly giving up his timidity but considering war against Spain to secure his son-in-law and daughter’s restitution in Bohemia. The same consideration against England was being held in Spain. Bearing in mind that all this jostling about was being held in the background of what was later called the Thirty Years' War, when the Spanish and French, both Catholics, were at each other's throats.
After all, contrary to what many believe, the Thirty Years' War was far more than just about religion; it was about State supremacy, power, and territorial gains, and about seeing strength in alliances. Taking advantage of the situation and, through dynastic rapprochements, opportunistically arranging a French Bourbon marriage for Prince Charles with Louis XIII’s sister, Henrietta Maria. The French, on the other hand, opposed this out of hand, on the grounds that heretic England was in a miserable situation, without friends or reputation, only assuming glory that was not worth a dowry. Eventually, though the French downplayed their insistence that the marriage treaty would ensure freedom of conscience, they accepted that a military alliance against Spain would come later. King James signed this marriage proposal in February 1625.
James VI and I, King of England and Scotland, died on 27th May 1625, and Prince Charles, having shelved his travel to Paris to marry Henrietta Maria, attended to arranging his father’s funeral, a massive affair that would cost some £50,000. The most important legacy associated with King James is the King James Version of the Bible (KJV). A scholarly translation from Greek and Hebrew that has gradually become the standard English Bible in use today.
Chapter III
King Charles I of England and Scotland
The year 1625 was an Annus Horribilis for England.
The 24-year-old Protestant Charles I of England and Scotland married 15-year-old Catholic Princess Henrietta Maria, the daughter of Catherine de Medici and the youngest sister of King Louis XIII of France. It was both a confessional and a political alliance, uniting France and England against the Habsburg-Spanish Empire. Before leaving France, Henrietta Maria was reminded that God was sending her to Britain to promote Catholic interests and do her best to convert her husband to the Catholic faith and a return to the glorious days of his Catholic grandmother, Mary, Queen of Scots. To mark the event, there was little celebration in 1625, as England suffered a severe outbreak of plague. And before the ink was dry, tensions arose between the Stuart-Bourbon alliance. The legacy James I left behind him still followed through. Religion, in many ways, still affected politics and society across the three kingdoms: England, Scotland and Ireland. In this period, church and state were deeply intertwined. The monarch was expected to defend and uphold the “true religion”; each kingdom believed it held the true religion. That will prove to be the bugbear throughout Charles’ rule. Charles, unlike his father, ran shallow; he was never cut from the same cloth.
It is worthwhile at this stage to provide some background on each of the three protagonists in our story and how they intertwined their religion with their political outlook. Charles was born on 19 November 1600. Unfortunately, he was nobody’s favourite. He was left with foster parents when his Parents left for England to take the English crown. He was a weak, rickets-afflicted child. He was short, bow-legged, with decaying teeth and bullied by his brother, Henry, at every opportunity. The Court painter, the Dutch Van Dyck, always seated a dwarf next to him, so that Charles looked bigger. His people never loved him; he was stubborn and protective. Historians agree that the man was the principal cause of the ensuing civil war.
Another case to answer was that of his archbishop, the troubling William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, in common with Charles’s wife, Henrietta Maria, both motivated by their separative and divisive religious convictions. Maud was eager to promote ceremonial procedures within the Church of England, in the form of altar rails and reverence for the Eucharist (high church Anglicanism), and worst of all, he was all for dismantling the central doctrine of Calvinism, namely predestination, and reintroducing icons and crosses. For the Godly (the Puritans called themselves), come hell or high water, were having none of it. England was being run by the emissary of hell, and the king was doing nothing to stop him, and was headed straight into the arms of Rome. In Stuart England, religion often led politics.
William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury
As for Henrietta Maria, the trouble began when, on a July day in 1626, coming back from a stroll in St James’s Park, she made a pilgrimage to Tyburn tree to pray for Catholics executed there at the scaffolds (today’s Marble Arch). People considered this as recognition of a sacred site, a Wailing Wall, and an affront to royal dignity, making the place holy. But the greater fear was that, through her influence, many of the inner circles converted to Catholicism. Catholic icons such as rosaries, crucifixes, and papistical pictures are being sold openly in the streets. Henrietta had no intention of keeping her religion private or under wraps.
Opening his first session of Parliament, Charles made it clear that, due to his stutter, he was not a man of words. In his maiden speech, he requested sufficient funds for a large-scale offensive against Spain to finance a shift from his father's pacific policy to an aggressive Protestant foreign policy, driven by personal humiliation from a failed Spanish marriage alliance in 1623 and a desire to help recover the Electorate of the Palatinate. Parliament did not concede to such demands because England could not afford another war with Spain. Besides, Parliament had grievances with Charles concerning the Duke of Buckingham, George Villiers. Chief advisor to the King and a recent convert to Catholicism. He monopolised political affairs, acted as the overlord in encouraging wars against Spain and France, and was appointed the King's right-hand man. But his principal crime was in partnership with Archbishop William Laud of Canterbury, who used all means possible to streamline the Prayer Book into a common Protestant worship throughout England and Scotland.
Despite Parliament's refusal to finance a major offensive, Buckingham ordered impressment, the forced subscription by intimidation and coercion into military service, a harebrained idea for his first offensive against Spain. Seeing Parliament's refusal to finance a war, Charles saw fit to raise finance by exploiting royal credits, staking his own jewels as surety and raiding Henrietta Maria’s dowry to overcome Parliament’s refusal to finance the war. Without a firm strategy, he assembled a fleet of ships setting sail from Portsmouth carrying drunken and untrained sailors. to arrive at Cadiz, Spain. Arrived there without a firm aim, in the middle of a storm, the whole expedition was an absolute fiasco. England became the laughing stock of Europe. Spain, in retaliation for this misadventure and for Charles's failure to marry the Spanish infanta, prepared, with the help of an Irish contingent, to invade England. Despite all the pomp that never materialised. For Spain, correctly, it was a stretch too far, having to deal with the ongoing Dutch revolt as well as the Castilian rebellion.
Here is an example of a distinctive piece of writing describing the situation soon after the Cadiz incident, putting the situation in context:
“Britain stood on the top of her white cliffs triumphing, London on tiptoe, overlooking all other cities in her swelling pride of her approaching fortunes, but never was such a sudden joy changed into so sudden a lamentation as the devastating impact of plague mortality at home and compounded by naval defeat at sea”. The plague at this time was causing a devastating death toll, especially in London.
Back-to-back, England was taken to task on other fronts. The Anglo-French relations also went downhill. Hardly had the marriage been consummated before an argument broke out between Charles and King Francis. Adding fuel to the opening wounds, Henrietta, as a Catholic, was unwilling to attend her husband’s coronation as the procedures were in accordance with the Protestant faith. Also, the French accused Charles of infringing the marriage treaty by not easing the conditions of Catholics in England but allowing renewed persecution, against those in minority, seeing that Charles had ordered all Henrietta’s catholic household out of the country “driving them like so many wild beasts until you have shipped them, and so the Devil go with them” he ordered a courtier.
Henrietta Maria of France, Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland
Needless to say, after the naval fiasco, many MPs demanded Buckingham's impeachment, while to the public in the street, the Duke of ‘Fuckingham’ became a target and a hated figure. Charles, growing frustrated by such attacks on his closest advisor, described MPs’ demands as an inquisition and reminded them that parliament is there to obey him and that it is in his power to convene or not. The man's arrogance and authoritativeness were beginning to show their ugly colours. The word subtle is completely alien to him. Consequently, Buckingham became a point of contention, and Charles imprisoned several MPs at the Tower of London and dissolved Parliament for their disobedience. Many MPs insisted that it was vital for Parliament to continue sitting so that it could hold the court to account. By now, parliamentary troubles were looming, and calls were being made to restore the old laws of Magna Carta with vigour: new petitions of rights by Parliament were being hailed. By now, mainly due to Buckingham's swashbuckling activities, the royal coffers were empty, and Parliament was insisting on sitting, but Charles refused to budge.
Duke of Buckingham
In August 1628, the Duke of Buckingham was stabbed to death by one of his seamen who served in the disastrous expedition to Cadiz. He was buried during the hours of darkness to minimise disruptions.
Tact, subtlety, and the art of cultivating goodwill were never strong points that one could credit to Charles. With Parliament dissolved, Charles resorted to personal rule, raising money through Royal prerogatives, a situation that was to last for 11 years of “tyranny”. At this time, it is worth bearing in mind that the war in Europe was at its height, and the Puritan exodus from England to America was underway following the Mayflower expedition. Lack of Money meant England had no role in the European arena, was unable to come to the aid of the persecuted Huguenots (French Protestants) in France (see below), nor to help restore his sister to the Protestant Bohemian throne. Literally, England was outside the world's orbit; its only concerns were domestic and raising revenue. In 1929, Parliament convened, but fearing an abrupt termination, MPs physically held down the speaker in his chair, with the objective that anyone who called out for raising money against Parliament's wishes would be considered an enemy of the Kingdom. Charles again dissolved Parliament immediately and ordered the arrest of some dozen MPs accused of destructive activities and sedition.
Meanwhile, in France, technically still at war with England, with so many MP’s debasing their king, the French described the English King as “blind, lame and impotent beggar”; he “can bark but can’t bite.” Adding insult to injury, it was a London-based French Huguenot who bought the Stuart crown jewels from a pawnbroker in Amsterdam and brought them back to England. But England’s continued war in France brought a silver lining: in true juggling fashion, peace treaties were signed with Spain, and this time there was no insistence on improving the conditions of English Catholics. Spain, with added measure, described England as a nullity, that it can neither do good nor harm. England, however, decided to remain neutral in the war raging in Europe, with King Charles, in defiance of the English Parliament, dismissing all efforts to side with the Protestants. Unsuspecting, though, England maintained a substantial naval fleet ready to come in and reap the benefits at the end when all others were exhausted. However, it was ridiculed by others who criticised the opportunity to stand aside as spectators, enjoying the tragedy of others.
After Buckingham’s assassination, Charles's relationship with his wife, Henrietta Maria, and her brother, the King of France, was no longer on a collision course. Soon enough, Hanrietta announced she was pregnant with the future Charles II, born in 1630. At about this time, the relationship between the Caroline court (King Charles Court) and the Papacy was also warming up through the efforts of Henrietta Maria. That was the first contact between England and the Papacy since the Reformation had severed it.
That was a red rag to a bull. Anti-Catholic resentment was growing among MPs, directed against Charles for his Catholic leanings and for the continued use of royal prerogative in applying taxes to raise revenue. The tool being used is the issuance of writs for ‘Ship Money,’ for instance, ostensibly to support the Navy. That was viewed as a violation of his subjects' liberty, since the Navy was at its best at the time, and England was at peace with the world. It was suspected that money was spent to bribe Spain to secure the restitution of Elizabeth, Charles's sister, to regain her crown of Bohemia; unknowingly, the King of Spain had already assigned her territory to Catholic Maximilian of Bavaria. Finding that Spain had closed all avenues, King Charles, in contrast with his father’s pacifist nature, had no doubt in engaging in hostilities. Parliament, however, had no such concerns and was not willing to finance a military expedition. Elizabeth’s two sons and King Charles' nephews, Charles Louis and his younger brother, Rupert, came over to England to plead their cause, but, again, England was not ready for Military intervention. Parliament stood its ground.
Parliament’s chief worry was the mounting number of high-profile subjects in the Carolyn court who were converting to Catholicism. Talk of Catholic scripture, ceremonies and mass attendance was becoming de rigueur. It was feared England was being drawn to the Catholic faith. The king was hopeful that such signals would be received in Rome. The alternative to declaring war on Spain, King Charles was increasingly hopeful that the Papacy would exert pressure on the Habsburgs for his sister’s restitution. While entertaining the Holy See’s representative at the Royal Court, a sign of closer Anglo-Papal relations was being firmly established. The rapprochement failed. Charles was seriously considering Military intervention using the Royal Prerogatives without parliamentary funding. British naval power at the time was represented by ‘The Sovereign of the Seas’, a great symbol of English sea power; its construction had cost over £65,000 (£50,000 over budget, not unlike the modern HS2, currently tens of billions of pounds over budget and around a decade behind schedule). As chickens come home to roost, so the restitution objective was abandoned, the ship remained unmanned and in harbour. Charles had more serious problems to deal with in Presbyterian Scotland.
In his efforts to revise church canons, King Charles introduced a new prayer book in 1637, intended to promote Protestant uniformity throughout the country. The congregation in Scotland considered such an introduction as Popish Anglican interference in their religion and was thrown out by the Scottish Parliament. The rejection was formalised by ‘The National Covenant’ to protect Scottish worship, rejecting any attempt at re-establishing any form of ‘Popish religion and tyranny and the ruin of the new Reformed religion’. The King, in his unsubtle way, was insisting that Royal policy must be obeyed and saw the National Covenant as a drain on his power, saying, “I would rather die than suffer.” So, the King ordered the dissolution of the Scottish Parliament, but that was ignored. Instead, it voted to abolish the office of Bishops (Presbyterianism did not believe in a hierarchical system of bishops and archbishops, unlike Episcopacy, Anglicanism, and Catholicism, which are based on such a system). From then on, things became complicated, and Charles's royal authority was under strain. The situation disintegrated; the question was no longer religious reform but royal authority. No longer a question of Bishops and Episcopacy but whether “I am King or not”.
Rebellions were not the exclusive rights of the Scots. Revolts in Catalonia, Portugal, as well as the rebellion of the Irish. Nations were turning upside down, suffering the turmoil of different kinds. Civil wars, wars of independence, and multiple border and religious conflicts were taking place across Europe. The only language dominated by Europeans is War. In England, there was a rumour that Charles was organising an army of foreign mercenaries to confront the Scots. The growing print culture was having a field day in inflaming the situation, insinuating there is no shortage of European powers that might come to the aid of a beleaguered King of England. There were Charles’s brother-in-law, the King of France; his uncle, Christian IV of Denmark; and the Dutch. Such an alarming misconception lit the fuse of the Scots to retaliate in kind, and the Catholic Irish took advantage of an opportune moment to rebel, which was eventually to cause a catastrophic number of deaths and destruction.
Before things could get out of hand, starting to affect the three kingdoms, the Irish rebellion needed to be suppressed. Charles played down the idea that France was helping the Irish, as well as dismissing rumours that the Spanish might be helping since they had their own problems with the French, Portuguese, the Catalonians, as well as the Dutch to deal with. English MP’s were in two minds whether raising an army jointly with the Scots. England’s Parliamentarians were concerned that joining with the Scottish Army would self proclaim to much credit, enough to claim victory as well as to claim territory in Ireland as payment for intervention. The Scotts, on the other hand, considered the rebellion an English responsibility and were not prepared to incur costs in deploying an army. The problem escalated when one of the leaders of the Irish rebellion produced a document (not known at the time as a forgery), which King Charles had authorised Irish Catholics to take up arms against their Protestant neighbours. Massacres of Irish Protestants followed until the Irish were brutally and viciously suppressed by Oliver Cromwell in 1649, leading to a blood bath on the pretence of doing God’s work against devil worshippers. More of that in the next chapter.
Domestic troubles in England were never far away. In 1641, MPs were demanding a significant reduction in episcopal power in Parliament and for Charles to reject such demands. But, in defiance, Bishops were prevented from sitting in the House of Lords, and some were charged with treason and imprisoned for challenging the supremacy of Parliament. Noises were getting louder; unless Charles accepted these demands, Civil war was not far away. There followed further drama and humiliation when Charles entered Parliament, accompanied by an armed entourage to arrest five MPs, only to find they had escaped the chamber. The MPs no longer sat in Parliament and refused to hand over the wanted MPs, but relocated to the Guildhall. In the streets, all outside jovial appearances to the King had disappeared, and many put up shutters and stood outside with swords in hand. The King, fearing for his own safety, fled with his family to Hampton Court. The MPs returned to Westminster in Triumph and changed the locks of all doors.
Charles would not return to London until a week before his execution.
Some interesting notes for readers to take away.
The Huguenots
The Huguenots were French Calvinist Protestants who faced centuries of persecution, most notably leading to massacres like the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572, an event that saw thousands of Huguenots massacred in Paris and across France, forcing many to flee.
They also later suffered widespread persecution after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which had granted them religious freedoms. Many Huguenots fled France for other countries, arriving in England in several waves between the 16th and 18th centuries, where they were welcomed for their skills in various crafts and trades and made significant contributions to British society. (taken from Wikipedia)
The Thirty Years' War 1618 - 1648.
I start with the fact that it was not just about religion, but also about the nature of government and the balance of power in Europe. It pitted Catholics against Protestants, Catholics against Catholics, Lutherans against Calvinists, across the entire Holy Roman Empire. It lasted for thirty years, from the Defenestration in Prague to the Peace Treaty of Westphalia. The Holy Roman Empire was not a monarchy; it was not just a confederation of territories, but a feudal association bound to an elected emperor. The big question was who would elect the emperor, who, after all, was the guardian of Christianity.
A war with such devastation, the likes of which had never been seen for the next 300 years.
The Covenanters
In 1638, a gathering of Presbyterians swore a solemn covenant in Edinburgh, Scotland, joined by an estimated 300,000 members, an extraordinary show of defiant unity that declared the people were subject to the king, but the King was subject to God. His duty was to maintain the Scottish Presbyterian religion. The movement was similar to how the Reformation reached Scotland, mainly by a process of rebellion in their break with Rome. It was more of a political rebellion against the Catholic Mary of Guise, Queen of Scotland, and later acting as regent for her daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots.
Chapter IV
The Prelude to the Civil War
And the Wars of the Three Kingdoms
The civil war in the seventeenth century under the Stuart Dynasty is perhaps the single most important event in English History. Somehow, it has not captured people’s imagination as much as, say, Henry VIII’s wives or Victoria’s reign have done. There are hardly any memorials to mark the events, and where there may be, they have become areas dotted with picnickers. No Fourth of July, no Bastille Day, and no legendary figures to commemorate in the heroic struggle to define for the world freedom. Unfortunately, the English have a way of downplaying their achievements; perhaps they are too good at covering them up, so much so that they become objects of forgetting. Battle lines of Marston Moor or Naseby, Sedgehill at Newbury, Brentford, and the siege of Gloucester make no impression. Hardly anyone knows that Oxford Town, at some stage, became the royalist Capital of the Kingdom of England, standing in opposition to London, the republican capital.
In this chapter, I take you through the causes of the civil war, the religious wars in the hearts and minds of the people, and the stubbornness of the king. The resistance to attempts to unite and uniform religion of the three kingdoms, England, Scotland and Ireland and the growing divide between the Catholic Popery and the Presbyterian and hard-core Calvinists, the Puritans at times called the Godly. These were the primary factors that gave rise to mistrust among people, friends, neighbours, and families. Some were killing and shedding their blood for their God, while others were for a cause, and still others for the King or Country. Charles was the designer of his own fate and caused the deaths of approximately 800,000 people. One in four of the able-bodied men fought in the Civil War, which caused the country to violently tear itself apart. For years afterwards, London streets were full of one-legged beggars. People’s lives were changed forever. People questioned aspects of life and the purpose of their existence; their answers still govern our lives today.
Nevertheless, the civil war was the making of England, the Nation, and the making of the English People. It set the horizon of the English people’s expectations and understanding of the people who fought in that war and who they are today. It also inspired the American and French Revolutions, influencing the causes against a king’s tyranny and changing the course of world history forever.
It was Charles, who had a difficult and painful childhood, who had to think differently about the state. The King’s small and bow-legged body, caused by having rickets early in life, wanted a new kind of kingdom. It was an angry response to what he felt was intolerable bullying. In 1628, Parliament attempted to assert its demands over him, and, failing to comply with his commands, he believed Parliament had failed him and compromised his honour. So, why summon parliament? To take a leaf out of the Bourbons in France and the Spanish, who do without a Parliament, Charles opted for personal rule instead, defying Parliament. The events that ultimately led to the Civil War were set in motion by a royal tantrum. It can be argued that King Charles was, in many ways, the architect of his own misfortune. Parliament was there to generate revenue, and without it, Charles could only use his privileged prerogatives, as it was called. Mainly by using ‘ship money, an unparliamentary and archaic form of collecting taxes. For many, this meant extraction of money without representation, as the American revolutionaries called it, a hundred and fifty years later. People at first grumbled, but they paid up. Complaints became louder as the taxes became more routine. Discontent grew more substantial, and criticism of the King's prerogatives was at the core of the grievances. This system was a subversion of the entire state, and it was a man with so much power who used none of it to help his people. After a court ruled against the prerogative to collect Ship Money, more people refused to pay, giving a brief voice to resentment. We are, however, still far away from revolution at this stage, but it was expected that if Charles were to ever recall Parliament, he could expect trouble.
Parliamentarians were not the only enemy, but with the help of the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, and the King’s wife, Queen Henrietta Maria, they created more enemies as differences and fears over religion and beliefs took centre stage. Mixed with Parliamentarians' discontent, it proved a lethal combination. The majority of the religious were Protestants who feared Popery. Some wanted complete reform of the Presbyterian with no bishops (anti-episcopacy), while others were conservatives who supported the Anglican Church of Elizabethan England. Archbishop Laud wanted to bring back altar rails and reverence to the Eucharist, and suppress the Puritans or the Godly, in an effort to dismantle their ideas on Calvinistic predestination, where every person was already bound to either heaven or hell. To the Godly, the Laudian interference meant that the Church of England was being run by an emissary from hell. Apprehension also became widespread that Charles' personal rule risked running the kingdom into the arms of Rome. The hanging of crosses and icons is becoming widespread. While personal rule might be forgotten, Laud’s reforms were on constant display in every church. Interlacing politics and religion becomes obvious when divisions within church areas occur, led by bishops who represent a hierarchical artificiality that signifies that the priest is sacred and, in broad terms, that other hierarchies are open to question.
The other problem Charles brought on himself was marrying the Catholic French Princess Henrietta Maria in 1625. As soon as she arrived at the English court, she began what she had promised her mother, Marie de Medici, to do. To spread Catholicism. The new queen had her own Chapel at St James’s Palace, and a Jesuit Chaplain, and went on a spectacular wave of conversion among the aristocracy. While such conversions were going on, crosses, icons, and rosaries were still being imported. She acquired the habit of walking along in St. James’s Park with a rosary in her hand all the way to the gallows (Marble Arch) along the route of the Tyburn tree. Neither she nor her followers were content to keep their religion private. Many resented such an exhibition, viewing it as an outrage to Christendom and an affront to royal dignity. Besides, the laws of England, at the time, allowed people to be hanged for being Catholic, for doing less than what Henrietta’s marriage treaty allowed her to do. The Godly who feared and detested popery were alarmed at such flagrant visibility by this ‘shameless emissary of the whore of Babylon’, and her great wit and beauty made matters worse. All this aestacisation of religion had gone too far, even for Charles. Wherever possible, both he and Archbishop Laud were horrified by the rate of conversions; they discouraged their subjects from attending Mass.
But outside the court, people became suspicious of Catholic subversion. What this amounted to was that England, an elect Protestant nation, was believed to be in danger from its own sovereign. But this discontent was about to change into something more substantial. The combination of the ship money method of collecting taxes, the religious Romanised Reformation, and the toleration of Catholicism was too much for the Godly and the Presbyterians to bear, given a situation bound to spark agitation. This eventually took the form of John Hampden and John Pym, both solid, godly individuals, who argued that suspicion is not enough; rather, they confronted the king with their grievances. The increase of Catholic affairs is tantamount to the subversion of the whole state. Their speech called Ship money into question and refused to pay such an unparliamentary tax. This led to Ship Money trials questioning the king's right and powers to raise money through the hated prerogatives. The court found in favour of John Hampden.
Things were taking a bad turn not only against the King but also against his wife, Henrietta, and Archbishop Laud. Many were taking a free hand in campaigning against the King’s personal rule, and as many were suspecting his Catholic leanings. Loud dissenters were jailed and had their ears clipped, much to his dismay; such cruelty only increased their popularity amongst the Londoners who saw them as living martyrs.
Laud was eventually charged with high treason, which was part of the anti-popery campaign, which eventually would generate a national crisis whipped up mainly by the Godly, who viewed his Arminian doctrines as dangerously close to the Roman Catholicism they hated so much. He was removed to the Tower and remained a prisoner for three years before finally being brought to trial before the House of Lords in March 1644 and executed the following year. Arminianism is essentially Anglicanism, the Church of England today. It was the belief that men and women could be saved by their own works and goodness, and by their own repentance; the way to heaven was a slow and steady walk, lined with kindness to others. This harmless-sounding idea flew in the face of Calvinism, which held that every person was destined by God to be either saved or damned and could moreover be saved by his grace alone. Laudian, Arminianism was seen as a menace. As a result of heightened anxieties of this kind, becoming an MP came to involve a declaration of religious allegiance. The target here was also Queen Henrietta and her entourage; “going to mass” became their everyday language, further fueling people’s fears that the court was succumbing to the Jesuits' influence. They spread the ideas that catholic conspirators are everywhere, representing a terrible danger.
As if that was not trouble enough, fears grew further from numerous write-ups by people. Prominent among them were John Milton, John Fox, and other Protestant anti-monarchists who haunted the Protestant imagination, spreading the dread of Catholicism, fanning the memory of the Fifth of November, the Catholic Gunpowder Plot, and presenting constant reminders that the Jesuits were the enemies of Parliament. Great emphasis on conspiracy theories that Queen Henrietta was plotting a French invasion. The man most responsible for spreading those fears was the MP John Pym, a red-hot Puritan. Anti-Spanish, Anti-French, and fervent Anti-Catholic, his principal aim is to save the great eye of the Kingdom, the Parliament, from Popery. He was the chief opponent of Arminianism, whom he considered to be devil worshippers and had persuaded many MPs that a popish conspiracy was on the way, and the leniency shown by the King and his ministers posed an immediate threat to this kingdom. He further proclaimed that we ought to obey God rather than Man, a clear sign of the politicisation of religion. The Papists had become a menace in politics as well as in matters of religion, and were, so far as he was concerned, a conspiracy to alter the Kingdom, while the King seemed oblivious to such a growing danger.
Colouring the Anti-Charles Mosaic even further, the English and the Scots were increasingly developing their ideas of individual identity within rigid ideologies of opposition to Rome. Writers and pamphleteers further popularised such ideas that cast a shadow over King Charles' condescension to the suspected Catholics, casting him as a traitor to his own people. This was further emphasised when he allowed the spread of Spanish and French Catholic foreign influence instead of defending the true Protestant religion of England. Worse was to come. News emanating from Ireland following the Irish rebellion, the Catholic Irish were massacring Protestants. For many, it seemed, news of barbarity was coming across to the mainland. For many, that was the key factor driving the country to civil war. People viewed their king as an ally of the Irish rebels; they also believed that the notion of the king as a secret Catholic supporter was a key factor in dividing the nation.
Pym demanded reform on a grand scale, blaming Catholicism for all the diseases affecting parliament. He was now obliging the king to address grievances in a credo of the Grand Remonstrance outlining every grievance of personal rule, listing suspicions of the spread of Catholicism, finding a place for anti-Popish, anti-Laudian, and more besides. This was the principal cause to precipitate the English Civil War. Such demands brought the divisions between royalists and parliamentarians into the open. It showed more than anything that representatives of the nation were dividing. So too would the nation. Having learned of this rebellious behaviour, the king was adamant that he would regain his authority. On the 4th of January, 1642, accompanied by a contingent of soldiers, armed with pistols and swords, he set out to Parliament to arrest his chief opponents. It is suspected the rebels were forewarned, Charles was too late, “the birds had flown”. Charles, realising the state was losing his prestige and that his dignity and authority were diminished in parliament, left London with Queen Henrietta and retreated to Hampton Court.
Chapter V
The Civil War- Part One
And the War of the Three Kingdoms
The two parts of this chapter will take into account the build-up and brewing factors behind the Scottish War against the King and the English War against King Charles. To further complicate matters, we also have the Irish rebellion to consider at this time, as well as the subsequent Irish wars with the Kingdom. To follow on after that, the consequent trial and execution of King Charles for treason. I look at the Cromwellian period, the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, the English Republic, also known as the Interregnum. I examine the period of 1658, following Cromwell's death, which was succeeded by his son Richard’s ineffective rule.
While all this is going on, the Stuart Dynastic period seems to me one of the most literary productive centuries in British History. John Milton, the greatest English Poet in History (Paradise Lost), Shakespeare, Hobbes (The Leviathan), Robert Boyle, the pioneering scientist, the development of the Microscope, Sir Isaac Newton, and John Locke. The period is also marked by disasters such as the Great Fire of London in 1666 and severe plague outbreaks. Around that time, tea trading began, first introduced by Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese wife of King Charles II. The Mayflower, in 1620, carried the Pilgrim Fathers to the Americas. The Seventeenth Century was a period that saw the breaking away from religiously sanctioned state intolerance and executions, as well as the end of the Divine Right of Kings, finally ending arbitrary rule and subjecting the Monarch to Man.
--------------------------------
Scotland and the Scots.
The wars started with Scotland against England. What triggered the War was the prayer book that Archbishop Laud tried to introduce to Scotland, a form of religious practice that had already made many in England unhappy. The Scotts saw it as interference in their religion, popery, and the imposition of English rule. Laud had added the words “for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever”. The Scotts saw this as ecclesiastical monarchic absolutism. It must be noted that at this time, tensions already existed between the three kingdoms, with grievances festering primarily over alignment and uniformity between the English and Scots. The book served as a wake-up call. King Charles, stubborn as he was, tried to make sure that he, not the people of Scotland, was in charge of the Church of Scotland, The Kirk. He desperately wanted to see the unity of the Kingdoms, not just the unity of the Crown. It was a two-way thing, though. The problem was that the English did not want the Scots to influence affairs in England, and the Scots did not want to disappear into the identity of their richer and more powerful neighbour, and were adamant about putting God first and the Monarch second. As night follows day, that did not go down well with King Charles.
To understand the Scots, one needs to understand Scottish society of the period. Scotland at this time defined itself in terms of religion, more of a confessional State. Also deserving a brief mention, the Scots were ethnically divided between Highlanders, who spoke Gaelic, and Lowlanders, who spoke Anglo-Scottish. Needless to say, they despised each other. The fact is, the Highlanders were Catholic, and the Lowlanders are vehemently Presbyterian, anti-episcopalian, and passionately Godly. They needed a unifying factor and saw it in their religion. The Church of Scotland, the Kirk, was their unifying factor. They shunned Anglican ideas of kneeling at communion, private baptism, and private communion.
Driving home their grievance, efforts were made to oppose a union with England; a small radical party (The Kirk Party) was created within the Scottish God’s chosen church, as was the Godly party (The Puritans) in England. They warned Charles that he could not impose the English prayer book on Scotland. In a quasi-confessional state, the Scots' identity was that Scotland was the chosen nation of God, the true Israel. The crunch came when prayers from the book were recited in public, and riots broke out. In true fashion, the king stood his ground; he was not ready to remove any of the passages.
The Covenant
In 1638, a committee was formed in contention, creating the Solemn Covenant —a binding agreement with God. It was based on a confession of faith and loyalty of purpose. To uphold the true religion of the church and to oppose popery and superstition. It gained huge support at a rapid pace; within a short time, upwards of 300,000 took the oath by signing the Covenant. The Covenant was also a political act, an extraordinary show of defiant unity, a definition of nationhood, and a form of resistance to the rule of Westminster. It was also a guiding principle of the separation of church and state. Loyalty was reserved for the King, to defend the true Protestant Religion, and the Covenant is with God. If the King failed in his role, then the covenant required that he be resisted because he failed to keep faith with God. Charles still failed to act, but it was increasingly clear he was no longer in control of the situation. He had as much power to hold this wave as King Canute holding the tide.
The Covenant itself, embodying Presbyterian solidarity, was not of the state; it is the people’s contract with God. The Presbyterian Church of Scotland, the Kirk, expressed this degree of autonomy, which ‘owned’ the covenant. Such an alliance between Church and State did not create rivalry, but it did, to a degree, put pressure on worshippers as to where their primary loyalty should lie, and made it difficult, since the covenant did not spell out authority or hierarchy but directed its followers to obedience and discipline. The State, in its role, was careful not to defy the church in matters of spiritual significance. The Scotts were creating God’s Kingdom, allowing ‘the light of the Gospels to shine’. Their decisiveness would serve as an example for the English Godly party going forward. In resisting the King, the Covenanters have combined religion and political ideology to serve their purpose and show their subservience to God.
The Drums of War
By now, Charles was convinced that the only way to solve his problems in Scotland was by force of arms. A new war of religion was about to gain pace. Scottish veterans, from the continent, were returning- mercenary fighters from the epic of the Thirty Years' War, able to form a professional army, ready to roll back the Laudian reforms. Exchanges of ideas and cross-border cultural influences between Scotland and England were gaining momentum. An English parliamentarian encouraged the Scots to connect the terror of Catholicism with their own godly agenda. To Charles, the Scots’ opposition seemed like a threat to undermine him. It was victory or death; an all-out war was inevitable. The Scots were out to destroy the monarch and impose a republic. The Covenanters were traitors whose lives must be forfeited.
At the end of March 1639, the King left London at the head of 20,000 men, a motley crew of mostly untrained, unwilling, and underpaid. In the background, his wife, Queen Henrietta, was collecting money from Catholics, an act that further exasperated the English Parliament, raising suspicion that a papist plot lay behind the Scottish war, that Charles was trying to transform the Scottish religion to restore the Catholic Church. People in England felt the king was fighting for the wrong side and that they were damned, fearing that God was deserting the nation. Eventually, the Scots and the English Army met outside Berwick-on-Tweed, Northumberland, a couple of miles south of the Scottish border, where the English quickly realised they were surrounded by a much bigger, tougher, and better-trained army, and wisely retreated. Eventually, both sides signed a truce to what came to be called the first Bishops’ War. Ironically, this was also the time when the Scottish clans divided into Covenanters and Engagers, supporters of the king, and they began fighting each other. In this Bishop’s War, an estimated five hundred men died. Also, Charles lost his personal rule, and he ran out of money.
Unbounded obduracy was taking hold. For an alternative, King was to try to raise an Irish Catholic army against the Scots. But Ireland was also being divided along religious lines, between the Irish Presbyterians in Ulster, ‘a bunch of fanatics’ as the king described them, who also stood in the way of Laudian reforms. But that is not all. The year 1641 also saw the Irish Rebellion, led by a rebel army. The Irish demanded the return of confiscated land and the start of the Irish Confederate Wars, which were part of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Thousands of Protestant settlers were expelled or massacred, and Catholics were killed in retaliation.
English Parliament
Charles’s only option now was to recall the English parliament, after twelve years of personal authoritarian rule. This was in an effort to raise money to defeat the unruly Scots. He made up a story that the Scots were urging Catholic France to raise an army against England. Parliament didn’t buy that, citing the fact that there were dangers at home far greater than what the letter purports, so Parliament insisted that Charles must address their list of grievances, including the protection of Protestantism, before they agreed to advance him the money. The Magna Carta was being riven. Radical voices were demanding that the ‘commons’ ancient rights be respected, and to restrain the King’s attempts to diminish them. Typical of Charles’s short fuse, he dissolved parliament.
Unrestrained and still not able to get the money from Parliament to face the Scottish army again, he managed, through donations and gifts from loyalists, to scrape up enough money to gather some 25,000 men, untrained, hungry, cold, undisciplined, and raw. They were mutinous and murderous. On the way, they murdered a pregnant woman in Oxford, and in Rickmansworth and elsewhere, they ransacked churches as they went. The Scots defeated them and, for the first time, Scotland defeated and invaded England all the way to Newcastle. Charles had to recall parliament again later in 1641. By then, radicalism had grown to fever pitch, and some of its members were creating an anti-royalist tinderbox. Working against the typical English political system to right itself, to seek consensus and shun division. Popery, anti-Jesuit conspiracy, and anti-Arminianism, only to see the house divided and the conflict deepen. And so was London dividing.
After the King had packed his bags and abandoned Whitehall, Parliament was free to begin gathering troops, primarily from the East End, and trusted Parliamentarians. A militia committee was established, and regiments were formed, with funds gathered to finance this army. Laudian ministers were silenced, Catholics were being rounded up, and their houses looted. Parliamentarian towns, such as Colchester, were fortified; elsewhere, Catholic priests were hanged and quartered by radicalists and activists. Disorder and vandalism spread throughout the Kingdom, and a holy crusade was taking over the land. Parliament, in its own capacity, put to death some thirty Catholic priests at Tyburn (Marble Arch). The nation had come to define itself in opposition to some of its own citizens. The nation was divided, and so was Parliament, with Parliamentarians opposing the Monarchists. The Civil War was but a short distance away.
Chapter V
The Civil War- Part Two
And the War of the Three Kingdoms
King or Parliament
Charles, dicing with death, is committed to war. On August 1642, Charles I, King of England and Scotland, on a windy, rainy, soggy day, raised his Standard on the fields of Nottingham as a show of authority. Charles, a stickler on ceremonials, was only to see that the flag was blown down into the mud. For a religious man, that spelt doom, an ominous sign, but he had now reached a point of no return; he had to draw the sword to save his kingship. To stand up to the traitors and the rebels, as he called those opposing him, and fight for his crown and dignity. In Chester, troops were raised for Parliament, while in Shepton Mallet for the King. England remapped in accordance with loyalties and families alike, according to identity affiliation. And so the first blood was shed at a place called Marshall Elm, Somerset. It was a Royalist Victory, and twenty-seven Parliament men lay dead. There followed an element of taking sides, and there were only two sides, Royalists or Parliamentarians, Protestants against fellow Protestants, and all protestants fearing and fighting those anti-Christ, Catholics suspected of plotting to subvert the church and the state. People were uniting while others were dividing according to the choices before them. So were father, mother, son and daughter, dividing either along religious or alliances.
Trouble was brewing from as early as the end of 1641; fear for the Royal family became only too real. On the 7th of January 1642, people in their thousands were crying out ‘Privilege to Parliament’ and stood at their doors with swords in hand in a show of solidarity with Parliament. On the 10th of January, 1642, fearing for his life and the safety of the royal family, Charles fled to Hampton Court. He would not return to London until two weeks after his execution in 1649. In response, to make matters worse, MPs returned to Parliament and changed the locks. In the meantime, Queen Henrietta left her children behind, and a divided England, escaped to the Hague, where she attempted to secure supplies of arms and troops. Such attempts did not go down well with the Parliamentarians, nor with the Protestant Dutch States, who disregarded intentions to promote ruin against fellow Protestant states.
Soon after, news emerged that even the Royal family, living in exile, was divided in their affection, namely his nephews, the German-born Prince Rupert, just thirteen years old, and his brother Maurice, who aligned with the Royalist cause in support of their uncle. While their older brother, Charles Louis, joined the Parliamentarians. In the meantime, the gathering storm was unrelenting. With further fears for his life, King Charles relocated to York to gather support for his troops. Soon after, he faced humiliation when he was refused permission to acquire a large arsenal of weaponry in Hull, and when some of his commanders were refused entry to Manchester by its citizens. While in London, a Parliamentary army of 10,000 volunteers was gathering momentum for the war.
Prince Rupert
Edgehill in Warwickshire marked the first battle of the Civil War. Prince Rupert, King Charles ' nephew, fought with zeal and emerged as the hero of the hour. Going beyond expectations, winning the hearts of the thousands of soldiers who were soon to acquire the derogatory name "Cavaliers," A term borrowed from the Spanish Caballeros. Parliament objected that a foreigner had the intention of drawing the sword on English shores. Rupert’s reply was that the sword was in defence of the true religion (Catholic), and fighting for his uncle’s rights. He was later appointed by his uncle as Captain General of all Royalist forces. Rupert was to prove an exception in battles and a great general. He won battles at Braddock Down in Cornwall, Roundway Down in Wiltshire, and Adwalton Moor in Yorkshire, and the Capture of Bristol won him great praise. Up North, however, Parliaments, for added strength, were forced to open negotiations with the Scots and formed the Anglo-Scottish alliance known as the Solemn League and Covenant, committing the English Parliament to the Church of England, which would be reformed along Scottish Presbyterian lines.
In 1644, a Covenanter army of 21,000 crossed the River Tweed and entered Northumberland. Three days later, partly because of the ongoing plague in London, Charles opened a rival Royalist parliament in Oxford, establishing it as his new capital. About this time, 18,000 soldiers from Ireland were invited to join the Royalist cause, but once on the mainland, they divided along religious lines, with some being Protestants. The Catholics that remained were accused of committing severe atrocities; they beat, strip, and drown Parliamentarians, including women and children. However, it was not one-way; the other side was capable of committing atrocities as well.
Victories and defeats were shifting from one side to the other. Parliamentarian victories at the Battle of Marston Moor outside York were one of the bloodiest when around 45,000 soldiers confronted one another. The Royalists lost control of the North of England, ending Prince Rupert's reputation as an invincible commander. That was the turning point for “his robbing, stealing whoring, and killing the people of God. Such accusations flourished against him; he became a hated figure, later identified as “the only cause of war in this kingdom.” At this point, the English wanted total defeat of the King while the Scots sought a negotiated settlement. The Anglo-Scottish alliance came to an end as priorities and loyalties shifted. Adding insult to further injury, the growing divide meant civil war was also dividing Scotland, while the Covenanters were assisting the English Army, Royalist resurgence was growing in Northern Scotland.
Disagreements between English army commanders were also emerging, chiefly between the 45-year-old MP for Cambridge, the rising military mastermind, Oliver Cromwell. He wanted to capitalise on victories at Marston Moor and Newbury, while the Earl of Manchester was seeking a permanent peace on the presumption that no matter how many times the Royalist army was defeated, King Charles would stay as King. At this stage, Oliver Cromwell’s anti-royalist passion was as yet unrevealed; his determination to do away with royalty was never subdued until that aim was achieved. Peace proposals, however, ensued, but quickly led to deadlock, with the King instructing his negotiators to remind the Parliamentarian delegation that they were rebels and that their end must be damnation, ruin, and infamy. It was feared, however, that the two sides would strip themselves of power and resources to the point that the Catholic Spanish and the French could invade England, leaving the Protestant Dutch in an uncompromising position. Despite their religious zeal and sobriety, which gave them a high moral authority, compromise was becoming an obsolete option. It was a war of who's Truth was truer.
A scene from a day spent at Newbury
With mounting disagreement between the Scotts and English Parliamentarians, the ‘Covenanters' army, mostly composed of Scottish infantry, refused to march south, remaining in place like an occupying force, which generated resentment among English MPs. It confirmed to the English Parliament that it should distrust all foreign forces, as the war was an English affair, and remain exclusive to England.
The New Model Army
Ensuring no foreign members, the English formed a pure nationalist army. The New Model Army, composed mainly of men of Puritan beliefs and paid conscripts independent of Parliament, was obliged to fight anywhere in the country to maintain loyalty to the Republican cause and to safeguard the commonwealth of England under its guardianship. The commander-in-chief during the Civil War was Sir Thomas Fairfax, and Oliver Cromwell served as his Lieutenant-General. In 1649, Cromwell was nominated by Parliament to lead the New Model Army to Ireland to defeat the Royalists. (more on that later).
Model Army (The Roundheads)
Following further failed peace negotiations in Uxbridge, the Battle of Naseby in Northamptonshire was fought in 1645, under the command of the newly appointed Oliver Cromwell. Around 4000 Royalist soldiers were captured together with the King’s political papers and private correspondence. Much of which revealed evidence of Royalist forces supported by foreign powers, namely French and Irish troops, who were offered, in payment, the Shetland and Orkney Islands. More importantly, the King had given his wife Henrietta “the power to promise in my name to whomsoever she wished that I will take away all the penal law against the Roman Catholics in England”. At that point, the Covenanters in Edinburgh assured their English counterparts that the Kingdom of Scotland was resolved to live and die with them.
Royalist defeats were on the increase. In early 1645, the surrender of Bristol by Prince Rupert compounded royalist losses of Devizes, Winchester, Basing House, Berkeley Castle, and Chepstow. Faced with such defeats, Charles started to distrust his nephew, “he is aspiring with Parliament plotting secretly for my ruin”. He ordered that he be arrested and forced to leave England.
In Parliament, attacks on the King were on the increase, accusing him of abandoning his country and refusing to make peace, preferring to encourage foreign catholic powers to invade England and to bathe his hands in the blood of his subjects. Further setbacks for the Royalists, as the south-western towns of Bridgwater, Sherborne, and Bath fell to the Parliamentarians while their forces were closing in on Oxford, Charles’s capital. Left with no alternative, the King escaped from Oxford disguised as a servant in 1647 and managed to sail to Newark to surrender to the Covenanters' Scottish Army, still camping there, but soon headed north to Newcastle. Still refusing to swear the Covenant.
Thoughts now turned to releasing Charles to London, as Charles was adamant he would not sign the Covenant, but the Scots needed authority over his treatment upon release. The Covenanters insisted that Charles was king of both kingdoms and his person indivisible. He could not be disposed of by any one of the kingdoms, irrespective of location, without the other, but ought to be disposed of by both. The English rejected this idea outright. Insisting that the king’s relation is divisible both in its nature and in its exercise. The King of England and the King of Scotland are one man; they are not one thing, denying the Scots to have a joint interest in the king’s fate. In the end, the English Parliament agreed to pay the Scottish Estates £400,000 (approximately £400 million in today's terms) for their assistance in the war, the surrender of Charles, and the return of the Covenant army to Scotland.
The Trial
Charles was taken to English Army headquarters in Newmarket before being transferred to Hampton Court, where, once more, his nephew Charles Louis presented him with new peace proposals, and once more, Charles refused to accede to any of the demands. And again in the dead of night, ‘slippery’, Charles put on a disguise and made his escape, this time to Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight. Again, he was captured and made a parliamentary prisoner. This time, Parliamentarians presented a shortened list of demands in the renewed approach for peace with the King. Charles was uninterested but instead acceded to Scottish peace proposals and entered into an alliance to invade England. On January 3, 1648, after seven rejections of peace proposals, Parliament passed a vote precluding any further negotiation with the king. With Oliver Cromwell enraged at such news emanating from the Isle of Wight, he declared that such an alliance is aimed at vassalizing us to a foreign nation, nothing short of treason. A second civil war was very much on the cards.
A massive buildup of coalition forces, comprising 10,000 Scottish and Irish soldiers, was joined by another 10,000 English royalists aimed at invading England. Once more, this show of force was defeated soon after crossing the Cumbrian border by a much smaller parliamentary force led by General Oliver Cromwell at the Battle of Preston. At Westminster, in the meantime, disagreements were taking place over whether, yet again, to start another round of peace talks with the king, dubbed the Treaty of Newport. It so happens the King did, on this occasion, accede to many of the demands Parliament was imposing. To outsiders such as the French Court, it was seen as nothing less than a capitulation of Royal Power, ‘his sword is taken from him’. Others in Parliament, led by Oliver Cromwell, viewed Charles as untrustworthy and treacherous, and they further demanded justice for the blood spilt and that exemplary justice be meted out through capital punishment. In opposition to some MPs, the Army rejected the terms of the Treaty of Newport, expelling many members from Parliament, leaving a Rump Parliament to approve the Army’s proposals, thereby providing a clear Parliamentary path to Regicide. England was in the grip of a Coupe D’etat governed by an unconstitutional Rump Parliament.
Despite a chorus of objections from the Continent, Scotland and Parliamentarians, Charles’ trial at Westminster Hall on 20 January on charges of creating cruel and bloody wars, accused him of “being guilty of all the treasons, murders, rapines, rapes, burnings, spoils, desolation, damages to this nation”.
The trial, the court and their respective legal construction and establishment were questioned, and here the subject deserves some mention at length. All very Nitty Gritty stuff, but very interesting.
Placed on trial for treason by the English state, Charles adopted a different course to that chosen by his grandmother, Mary, Queen of Scots, by refusing even to enter a plea of guilty or not-guilty on the grounds that it was as great a sin to withstand lawful authority, as it is to submit to a tyrannical, or any other ways unlawful authority. The Court lacked the essential ‘Trinity’ of Kings, Lords and Commons. The argument centred on whether the court, composed of a section of parliamentarians, was the Rump parliament. That Charles, by the rights of Kings, was also only answerable to God, it also had to deal with the fact of Treason. Treason was an act against the King, but the accused was the King, and the source of that accusation was Parliament. But Parliament at that time was composed only of a few chosen members, the Rump Parliament. In modern terms, the parliament of the willing. A show trial. There was no counterargument, no force from the other perspective. Fear and cowardice due to the threat of retribution could be meted out by an authoritarian state. Any resistance came from Charles himself, who finally had to submit to the established power. Eventually, only 59 members of Parliament signed the death warrant.
On 30 January 1649, the King walked through the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall onto a scaffold outside. To hide his shivering body from the freezing temperatures, just in case he gets mistaken for cowardice, he asked for a blanket. The anointed hereditary Monarch, King Charles, was executed in Public with the cry “I am the martyr of the people”.
The demands of some royalists that "30 January be printed in red letters on every calendar" were never heeded. His body was later buried at St George’s Chapel, Windsor.
Chapter VI
The Civil War- The English Republic
The Interregnum
And the War of the Three Kingdoms
Regicide
The killing of Charles I, the ‘Regicide’ of an Anointed Royal, stunned many people, and uproar resulted in many areas of England and on the continent of Europe. It did not go unnoticed by the French that the English were happy to treat their Royal as common criminals and dispose of them as they had done with Charles's grandmother, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Queen of France. To preserve continuity of the House of Stuart, Scotland, on hearing the news of the execution, unilaterally proclaimed his eighteen-year-old son as Charles II, King of Scotland. Similar divisions emerged in Ireland, where Irish Catholic rebels sought to capitalise on the confusion in England. The Kingdoms were dividing along religious and loyalist lines, forming opposing groups within each kingdom. England was gripped by an Army takeover, resulting in military rule despite the ostensible presence of a superficially functioning Parliament. Amid all this confusion and rejection, Oliver Cromwell, MP for Cambridge, rose through the Army ranks, proving to be a formidable soldier and then a General, before holding power as Lord Protector of what was later named the Commonwealth. The Monarchy was eventually restored in 1660 after eleven years of Republican rule, which saw two civil wars and approximately a million dead across the three kingdoms, from warfare and disease, with an equal number of injuries. The restoration did not come quickly enough at the end of this long, violent Interregnum.
For the Scotts, execution of the King by the English Parliament was the straw that broke the Camel’s back. It proved to be the catalyst for the War of the Three Kingdoms. Five days after the regicide, Bishop John Warner preached a sermon drawing parallels between Christ’s passion and Charles’s execution, no less emphasised by the posthumous publication of ‘Eikon Basilike’, presenting Charles as his sacred Majesty in His Solitudes and Sufferings. Depicting Charles holding the crown of thorns as his earthly crown lay on the floor. While in the Hague, where the exiled court was residing, on the same day, Charles’s son was no longer the Prince of Wales but immediately declared King by the Scots, His Majesty Charles II, not only King of Scotland, but also of England and Ireland. John Milton, of ‘Paradise Lost’ fame, a staunch republican, however, retorted by ridiculing the Scots for showing false outrage for the King’s execution when they were the original trigger for the civil war. Milton also had a go at the Eikon Basilike for anyone to show adoration to such an image of a man who has done more to undermine ‘our liberties and had made tyranny into an art’.
In France, as in Spain, Venice, the Netherlands and Moscow, Catholic and Protestant alike, lamenting the execution, scorned the English living without religion, King or law but subject only to the power of the sword.
It is interesting at this stage to sketch up a landscape of what was and is happening in the major powers of fragmented Europe at this time.
The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 put an end to the European Thirty Years' War, which had its origins in religious, ideological, territorial, and political grievances, and was now seeing soldiers returning to their different homelands. The long, drawn-out war that devastated the Holy Roman Empire and the House of Habsburg. Another side to it was between the two Catholic juggernauts, France and Spain, which ended in 1639. That ended only to see France embroiled in its own civil war, the 'Fronde', as it attempted to impose its absolutist ideology. Despite its oppressive efforts, the Fronde rebellion sparked two civil wars. Spain, on the other hand, had its own problem in efforts to prevent Portugal’s independence. As if that were not enough, France, under the ten-year-old Louis XIV, guided by Cardinal Richelieu and later by the Italian-born Cardinal Mazarin, had an insatiable territorial appetite and was embroiled in a never-ending conflict with the Protestant Dutch Netherlands. While further East, the Venetians' long-running war with the Ottomans, mainly over Crete, involved other Greek islands in the Aegean. But coming back to our shores, up to the 1830’s England enjoyed relative peace and economic prosperity.
Hot on the heels of the Execution, however, the English Rump Parliament lost no time in sending ambassadors to Royalist European cities to explain affairs of England to justify their actions and exercising all possible efforts to evade any ideas of possible English weaknesses at a time of confusion in the country that can be interpreted as an ideal time to invade England in defence of Monarchy. France was too weak at this time to intervene, having to deal with the Fronde (a rebellion to break Royalist power that failed) and having recently emerged from the damaging and costly Thirty Years' War. The English Parliament's speedy reaction led to the abolition of the House of Lords and the Monarchy, as being dangerous to the liberty and safety of the people. The English Republic was born.
When news of the Regicide reached Edinburgh, Scotland, on the 5th of February, 1649, as I said earlier, the Scottish Parliament proclaimed Charles II King of Scotland, England and Ireland. In March, the Scottish Parliament sent envoys to The Hague to negotiate Charles's return to Scotland. Clear strings attached: Charles would need to confirm his monarchical authority by swearing the Solemn League and Covenant, as his father had always refused to do. The exiled Royal court was distrustful of the Scots, since they who sold his father to those who murdered him. The story went that Scottish Presbyterianism presented greater tyranny than Catholic Rome ever could. Charles was considering this along the lines that, were he to return to Scotland as a crowned King, this might encourage European powers to provide financial and military assistance to gain all three Kingdoms. To foresee such possibilities, Charles sent his envoys to Spain, Venice, France, and Moscow, but all showed reluctance to provoke the emerging Republic in England.
Irish rebellion
In England, the Council of State had, in the meantime, authorised the reconquest of Ireland. A re-conquest, so called after the 1641 Irish rebellion, the Confederate war, when most of Ireland became under the control of the Irish Catholics. Cromwell landed near Dublin in August 1649 with an expeditionary force. By the end of 1650, the Confederacy, having allied itself with the Royalists, were defeated, although sporadic guerrilla warfare continued until 1653. Many Parliamentarians wished to punish the Irish for atrocities committed against the mainly Scottish Protestant settlers(Plantation Settlements who lived on land stolen from Catholics) during the 1641 Uprising.
Furthermore, some Irish towns (notably Wexford and Waterford) had acted as bases from which privateers (Pirates) had attacked English shipping throughout the 1640s. The invasion became a massacre of the Irish Catholics. Upon landing in Ireland, Cromwell headed for Drogheda. In the ensuing battle for the town, Cromwell ordered that no quarter be given, and the majority of the garrison and Catholic priests were killed. Many civilians also died in the sack. Aston, the Confederate General, was beaten to death by the Roundheads with his own wooden leg. The same atrocities were meted out on the Catholic population in Rathmines, Wexford, and Kilkenny, until finally the massacres had the entire population of Ireland comprehensively subjugated to Cromwell’s troops. Historians today approximate 400,000, up to 40% of the population died, mainly Catholic and some Royalists, from Warfare, famine and disease.
Oliver Cromwell was a pious man; his conviction led him to believe that his victories on the field of battle were God’s doing. He believed in the righteousness of his faith, as did all Puritans, believing they were God's chosen people. In common with how Cromwell saw it, the killing of Catholics is justified by God as the extermination of the Anti-Christ Papist followers, hence devil worshippers. Finding their truth in John’s Book of Revelation, believing in the Millennialism and the return of Christ. For this reason, he allowed the Jews to return to England, expelled from England since 1290 by King Edward I, by the ‘Edict of Expulsion’, motivated by ideas encouraging their conversion to Christianity in preparation for the long-awaited return of Christ. Jewish people were first introduced to England by William I, the Norman conqueror.
By now, Charles had transferred his court in exile to Breda in the Southern Netherlands. He embarked on further negotiations with Scottish delegates. Charles learnt that Scotland was ready to launch an invasion of England, and that, against all advice by his inner council, the Scots would send him to the scaffold as they had his father. But with no assistance forthcoming from Catholic powers, he was giving the proposition of going to Scotland serious consideration. Throw a sprat to catch a mackerel, so to speak.
Charles II
On 1st of January, 1651, Charles became the last British monarch to be crowned at Scone Palace, Scotland, and so recovered his father’s first lost throne. He shared with his conscience a convincing argument regarding an account of Charles’s maternal grandfather, Henri IV of France: he, in 1572, conveniently converted to Catholicism, believing the crown of France was worth a little, if it were not worth a Mass or two. But before concluding the terms with the Scots, and while on his way to Scotland, he was not allowed to set foot on Scottish soil without signing the Solemn League and Covenant. He signed both while his ship moored off Great Yarmouth. As a reminder, the covenant reaffirmed the Reformed faith and Presbyterian discipline, denounced the attempted changes, and also urged loyalty to the king.
Charles’s presence across the English border represented a danger to the Commonwealth. At this point, General Fairfax, commander of the New Model Army, became a conscientious objector, refusing to fight fellow Protestants, and resigned his leadership. On his resignation, the Rump Parliament appointed Cromwell to take over as commander-in-chief to invade Scotland.
With around 10,000 men, on the 3rd of September, 1650, Cromwell crossed the Scottish border heading for Dunbar. His army defeated twice as many soldiers on the Scottish side, around 23,000. Such a heavy defeat meant over 10.000 Scottish soldiers taken prisoners, many of whom were later sent as indentured labour in North America and the Caribbean. The young king made his escape to Perth, then on to Glen Clova, sleeping rough on the way. Cromwell didn’t let on; he continued his onslaught, subjecting Edinburgh to the heaviest bombardment in its history. The Scottish government surrendered on Christmas Eve, 1650.
Nevertheless, Stuart sympathies remained strong in Scotland, and it still offered Charles a base from which to enter England. The new incursion occurred around September 1651. Yet again, the Cromwell Army of 28,000 soldiers heavily defeated a much smaller Scottish contingent in the Battle of Worcester. Once more, the young king made his escape by hiding behind a large Oak Tree. Later disguised as a Manservant, Charles finally made a 120-mile journey on his way to the shores of Normandy via Brighton.
This episode acquired legendary status, which explains why ‘The Royal Oak’ became the second most popular Pub name in England.
Oliver Cromwell
Undoubtedly, with such remarkable military triumphs, Cromwell's reputation reverberated throughout Europe. Monarchies, including that of France, were on high alert, having received reports of Cromwell’s aim to convert all Monarchies into Republics. Spain became the first significant continental power to acknowledge the Commonwealth. Despite the Commonwealth's uneasiness at the time, foreign states remained keen to maintain a diplomatic presence in London. But not until December 1652 did Louis XIV finally recognise the Commonwealth. As for the Dutch, things took a turn for the worse. Hostilities broke out, which led to a declaration of war. It was mainly a war over trade practices, following the English Parliament's declaration of the Navigation Act, which prohibited the importation of goods into England on foreign ships, and over fishing rights. Eventually, the Protectorate agreed to end Anglo-Dutch hostilities through the Treaty of Westminster in 1654. As if these hostilities were not enough, our war mongering hero plunged into another war, this time with Spain on 26th October, 1655, this time over islands in the West Indies. Although acquiring Jamaica, England suffered a heavy defeat, a first for Cromwell.
Oliver Cromwell was being encouraged to wear the Crown of England. By all his actions, rules, commands and life, he exercised royal prerogatives; he was all but King. In 1657, he refused such ideas for coronation, not only does it run against Republican ideals, but also ‘the providence of God has laid this title aside; he further invoked the scriptural book of Joshua to confirm that ‘he would not build Jericho again’. But with such a high profile, it was natural that he would breed enemies. Rumoured assassination plots on the increase and imagination running riot, suspecting Spanish, French, Dutch, Scottish Presbyterians, or even, in some relayed rumours from Brussels, that Charles’s henchmen could be involved in Cromwell's removal. They surmised that killing him was not murder. Such rumours provided the background for the need to discuss future succession to the Protectorate, which coincided with noticeable shaking of Cromwell’s hands and apparent deterioration of Cromwell’s health.
On 3 September 1658, Oliver Cromwell died at Whitehall Palace at the age of fifty-nine. Historians today assume it was a recurrence of a latent Malarial infection. Immediately after his passing, the likely succession was in doubt, and it may create problems, as Queen Elizabeth did not nominate a successor. After a careful search, he had indeed nominated his eldest son, Richard, in writing as his successor. In effect, it made ‘Lord Protector’ a hereditary title, which was, to the rump parliamentarians, an anathema to Republicanism. In fact, Cromwell had a familial preferment, having appointed many of his immediate family to high positions, ambassadors and such like. Richard, however, proved hopeless; greatness was not hereditary. In the twenty months after Cromwell’s death, England experienced a bewildering array of regime changes, interspersed with army coups.
Before these dynamics, General Monck, a suspected Royal sympathiser who had remained in Scotland after Dunbar, was invited by the Rump members of Parliament to bring his troops into England and enter the city of London. There had been many riots in the city. Demands are being made to restore a full Parliament in the open, allowing all elected members to do away with just the Rump Parliamentarians' privileges. There were calls for no taxes to be collected until this was enacted. Having stationed his troops in Finsbury, Monck switched sides, relocated to Guildhall, joined those opposing the Trump members, and secured the return of all members of Parliament. Consequently, Parliament was dissolved in March 1660, and the newly elected Convention Parliament quickly invited Charles II to return to England as king, and another world began.
Chapter VII
The Restoration
The year 1660 marked a decisive turning point in English history, bringing to an end two decades of civil war, regicide, and a republican experiment, culminating in the Restoration of Charles II to the throne. The return of monarchy was widely greeted with relief rather than triumphalism, reflecting a society exhausted by religious radicalism, military rule, and political instability. Charles II was restored not as an absolutist ruler seeking revenge or innovation, but as a pragmatic monarch who envisaged his reign as one of healing, balance, and continuity. His primary aim was to re-establish the authority and dignity of the crown while avoiding the ideological rigidity and obduracy that had destroyed his father. Central to this vision was the restoration of the Church of England, the reassertion of traditional social hierarchies, and the careful management of religious division in a deeply fractured kingdom. The Restoration settlement of 1660 thus represented not a simple return to the past, but a negotiated attempt to stabilise the monarchy, the church, and the state after unprecedented upheaval.
Charles II, King of England
Charles the Second was crowned on St George’s day, 23rd of April, 1661. The coronation was a spectacle to behold. Like a modern coronation, it was an early start, and as the day progressed, people saw the gleaming horses with their plumes of red and white feathers, their saddles richly embroidered with pearls and gold. The new king, arriving by barge along the river Thames, was dressed in gold down to his golden sandals, surrounded by his bishops and nobles. The benches of Westminster Abbey were covered with scarlet cloth. Bishops drew a parallel between Charles and Christ, both having sought to build Kingdoms after sojourns in the wilderness. Everything contributed to the overall impression of magnificence. He was anointed in holy oil and invested with royal robes. All one could hear was “God save the King.” The final moment came when the Archbishop of Canterbury placed the crown on the King’s head, shouting among the nobility to serve the King. This was all done under the watchful eyes of the visiting ambassadors who discovered that England was, after all, not the barbaric place that they had imagined but emerging behind its own Iron Curtain of Republicanism. This was followed by a lavish dinner at Westminster Hall, the very hall in which twelve years earlier the King’s father had been tried for his life.
This is a far cry from the Coronation held in Scotland almost a decade ago, when he suffered a humiliating experience with imposition before being allowed to receive the crown of Scotland. Charles II’s coronation was unlike any other Stuart coronation: it was not a celebration of royal power, but a humbling, conditional ceremony shaped by Covenanter dominance and deep religious distrust. Charles signed both the National Covenant (1638) and the Solemn League and Covenant (1643), both of which committed him to defend Presbyterian church government in Scotland, oppose popery, prelacy and superstition.
The coronation ceremony in England cost the Chancellor £30,000 today’s equivalent: £10 million, give or take a pound or two. The gifts from foreign kings and queens showered on the king, however, more than made up for it. For instance, the delegation that arrived from Protestant Netherlands made a gift of 600,000 gilders, today’s equivalent of £40 million, give or take a guilder or two, at a time when an average monthly income was around twenty-five guilders. The House of Orange also returned twenty-eight Italian Renaissance paintings that Charles I had owned, which the Commonwealth sold. The gifts from Spain and France were described as “intolerably exorbitant”. The Venetians, as a gift, chose two Gondolas, each with its own Gondolier, and later moored them on the Thames at Hampton Court.
There were plenty of circulating rumours that Charles, once restored, would be a vengeful monarch, a Machiavellian in nature, with tyrannical policies to be unleashed on those who wronged him and wronged his father. In response, in April 1660, Charles issued a strategically worded ‘Declaration of Breda’ (Netherlands), where the exiled court was stationed at the time, committing himself to settling his subjects’ rights through a ‘free Parliament’, extending a free and general pardon to everyone except those not to be excepted by Parliament. He furthermore extended freedom of religion and freedom of religious consciousness. By such a declaration, he delegated responsibility to Parliament to deal with sensitive matters that could lead to difficult decision-making and put Parliament out of step with public opinion.
Charles II’s reign was declared to have started on 30 January 1649- the day of Charles I's execution. The interregnum was thrown into the heap of amnesia, deleting the eleven years of the Republic of England from all public records. The first act of parliament was an act of reconciliation, pardoning all involved in the wars and any crimes, except 33 named regicides.
Louis XIV of France
In true fashion for gaining acceptance, spreading rumours can cushion the storming of most preceding demands. This time, Louis XIV himself circulated rumours that he was assembling a French Army, demanding that Charles restore freedom of conscience for Catholics, as the King’s French mother requested, as well as rumours that Charles would marry the twelve-year-old Hortense Manzini, the Catholic niece of Louis’s chief minister. This was a time when the English welcomed the restoration not only of Charles as king, but also of the Stuart royal family, including the king’s mother, Henrietta Maria and his four siblings: his two brothers, York and Gloucester and his widowed sister, Mary of Orange, and younger sister, Henrietta Anne.
By coincidence, at this time, not a rumour but well known, that the daughter of the Duke of Clarendon, Charles’s Chancellor, Anne, was expecting the Duke of York’s child. Questions were asked about the paternity of the Child and whether the child was conceived before marriage. Naughty boy!
On 30 January 1661, being the twelfth anniversary of Charles I’s execution, the new king, by act of revenge, ordered that Oliver Cromwell’s elaborate vault in Westminster Abbey was to be opened, and his body exhumed, together with that of his son-in-law, fellow regicide Henry Ireton. The bodies were dragged to the public gallows at Tyburn (Marble Arch), hung there for six hours, cut down, and the heads severed from the bodies and thrown into a nearby pit. Cromwell was remembered from then on as the English Devil. The same crowd then claimed Charles “as our rising sun, and that the rays of our sacred majesty shine throughout the world”.
Having secured the Crown and Monarchy, it was time for England to think of succession. Naturally, enough expecting to find a wife for Charles. For political convenience but in due time for real love, Charles turned to the Catholic Princess Catarina, Catherine of Braganza. The Portuguese princess, daughter of King John IV of Portugal, the man who eventually secured independence after overthrowing the 60-year rule of the Spanish Habsburgs. Catarina came with an eye-watering dowry. Two million escudos (around £300,000, which equals £70 million in today’s money, give or take an escudo or two. Portugal also included the territories of Tangier, Morocco, as well as Bombay, India, and trading rights with Brazil and the Portuguese East Indies. Charles, in the meantime, had acknowledged the likely unpopularity of a Catholic Princess, and indeed that would happen. Despite the true love she had for Charles, which lasted until his death, owing to her devotion to the Roman Catholic faith, she was never liked in England.
Alarm bells rang throughout Europe, but none more so than those in Spain. They were further alarmed that, despite having helped Charles during his exile, he was now refusing to restore to Spain the Cromwellian acquisitions of Dunkirk and Jamaica.
Charles, now King of England, since the debacle of the Battle of Worcester, spent ten years in exile either on the run or wandering across Europe seeking help to secure what he rightly believed to be his, the Monarchy of England, Scotland and Ireland. With cosmopolitan experience behind him, he is well-positioned to direct his own foreign policy. It turned out that Charles was not interested in territorial expansion, a reversal of hitherto imperial acquisitive tendencies. Dunkirk, the only remaining foothold England had in Europe, which the Protectorate had acquired from Spain, was sold to Louis XIV of France, his French cousin, for 5 million Livres, bargained down from the initial asking price of 12 million. This prompted outrage in Madrid over trading in what rightfully belongs to Spain. In England, it caused deep discontent, as many considered it a bad deal. Politically, the sale under French ownership increased the likelihood that England would become entangled in territorial disputes with Spain, France, and the Dutch Republic. With a Portuguese wife and now the sale of Dunkirk, fears were growing that Spain was likely to stir up trouble within the kingdom.
Back to back to these troublesome days, there was a growing concern about the Dutch Republic's continued willingness to shelter regicides wanted for trial. For now, the Dutch were divided between those supporting Republicanism and those resisting England's moves to support the monarchical Orangist on behalf of Charles’s nephew, William. There was careful manoeuvring over who would form alliances between France, Spain, and the Dutch, and whether any such alliances were friendly to England. It was therefore to England’s interest to dispatch ambassadors to negotiate alliances with all three.
Troubles with the Dutch
But what was more worrying was the increase in trade competition between England and the Dutch. The Republic of the Netherlands attacked English ports in India, Africa, and elsewhere in a rivalry between the Dutch and British East India companies. The English navy launched several attacks on the Dutch fleet in Africa, resulting in the seizure of several Dutch ships. In America, an English warship attacked Delaware Bay, and the Dutch governor agreed to surrender New Amsterdam. Charles handed the deed to his brother, the Duke of York, and the port was renamed New York.
A second war against the Dutch was soon declared, destroying most of the Dutch ships, and around 5000 of their sailors lost their lives. In overall command of the British Navy was the Duke of York, who was to meet the Dutch fleet near the shores of Lowestoft. The English Parliament expressed a vote of thanks for the Duke of York’s bravery and expressed further financial subsidies to prolong the war. Successes in foreign policy led the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and other powers to seek an English Alliance.
What dampened the celebration was the severity of the plague that engulfed London in 1665. Nearly 100,000 dead were recorded in London in one year, forcing the Royal Court to relocate from Whitehall to Hampton Court, then on to Salisbury.
Much to the despair of Henrietta Maria, to dissuade her French nephew from declaring war on her son, Charles, King of England, Louis XIV of France finally declared war on England. He sided with the Dutch in an argument over the ‘ownership’ of the tiny Banda Islands, in modern Indonesia, England had claimed it under the Treaty of Westminster. The French, however, rubbished such a claim. The Dutch, still at war with England, had also allied with Denmark. England was effectively surrounded. Louis could attack the Isle of Wight; Frederick III of Denmark could attack the Orkneys and Shetland; and the Dutch fleet could blockade the Channel and the Thames—the result would be the conquest of the British Isles. England was down to the wire from being invaded.
The year 1666 was an annus horribilis for England. Despite being surrounded, however, England was not immediately defeated. The English fleet under Prince Rupert and George Monck fought the Dutch to a near-stalemate in the Four Days' Battle. The Dutch had caught England off guard, launched a surprise raid on English warships stationed in Chatham, Kent, burned several warships and embarrassingly towed away the flagship of the Royal Navy, HMS Royal Charles. England had reached its limits. As expected, surrounded by the three, military defeat was imminent before peace was established in 1667. Directly following the Plague, the Great Fire destroyed most of London, causing immense economic damage and crippling the ability to fund the war. The Peace Treaty of Breda confirmed the peace agreement. Immediately after this was signed, Louis XIV, a war monger by half, invaded the Spanish Netherlands using his wife's inheritance rights as a pretext. England, the Dutch, and Sweden formed the Grand Alliance, declaring war on France to stop its territorial ambitions.
A Bribe?
But Charles realised that he was running out of money. Parliament was no longer in favour of financing a war, and in seeking financial independence, he abandoned the Triple Alliance and made a secret deal with Louis XIV, mainly orchestrated by the English Duchess of Orleans, Henrietta Anne Stuart, who was the youngest sister of King Charles II of England, affectionately nicknamed "Minette" by him. The Secret Treaty of Dover (1670) saw England join France against the Dutch.
In keeping with his Catholic faith, Louis XIV pledged to pay Charles £1 million in advance and a yearly subsidy of £600,000 when Charles publicly declared his conversion to Catholicism. England was also promised three French Island colonies. In the event, English ships closed in and occupied the Dutch harbours, and with the 120,000 French troops virtually overrunning the Dutch, Louis ordered the entire Dutch Republic demolished. The decentralised Dutch Republic (led by Johan de Witt) failed to defend the country. Popular panic led to the lynching of Johan de Witt and his brother by an Orangist mob. William III, Charles's brother-in-law, was appointed stadtholder, restoring power to the House of Orange.
And, just for an extra treat, as I said, William III was the nephew of Charles II of England, as his mother, Mary, Princess Royal, was the sister of King Charles II. Beyond this familial bond, Charles II served as a guardian to the young William after Mary died in 1660 and later authorised the crucial 1677 marriage between William and Mary II, who was Charles II's niece. Easy to remember.
At about this time, England was in the throes of a succession crisis. The Duke of York, heir to the throne, had converted to Catholicism, so attention was turned to Charles’s likely Protestant successor. After several miscarriages, Catherine of Braganza, Charles’s wife, whose hopes of pregnancy were receding, decided that she would produce an heir. Pressure was mounting to divorce or annul the marriage. Charles never would take this possibility seriously, continuously side-stepping the issue despite having many illegitimate children from many mistresses. MPs were becoming nervous, and succession was increasingly serious. Moreover, fear was growing that Charles’s successor must never give a popish government any chance. Arrangements were being made with great haste for the marriage of the Duke of York’s oldest daughter, Mary, who remained a Protestant despite her father’s conversion, to marry William of Orange to put an end to this uncertainty.
The succession crisis that follows would set the pattern of Protestant England through the Act of Settlement and the Protestant United Kingdom by Act of Union.
Chapter VIII
The Succession Crisis and the Glorious Revolution
The coming succession crisis exposed the unresolved religious and constitutional tensions that had haunted the Stuart monarchy since its restoration in 1660. The accession of the Duke of York, as James II, an openly Catholic king, would revive deep-seated fears of absolutism, popery, and the subversion of Protestantism, fears sharpened by memories of Jesuit plots, King Charles I's religious impositions and the ensuing civil wars. The resulting crisis did not simply provoke a change of monarch but precipitated a fundamental redefinition of kingship itself.
The Glorious Revolution was thus less a sudden rupture than the culmination of long-standing conflicts over religion, authority, and the limits of royal power, replacing the doctrine of divine right with a conditional, Protestant monarchy grounded in parliamentary consent. The invitation to William of Orange and Mary, James’s Protestant daughter, marked a decisive shift in political thinking: monarchy would no longer rest solely on hereditary right but on the defence of Protestantism and the rule of law, a redefinition of Kingship. This settlement was ultimately secured by the Act of Settlement (1701), which entrenched a Protestant succession and ensured that the crown would henceforth be conditional upon parliamentary consent, completing the transformation of England into a constitutional monarchy.
This was a huge step to take and proved to be the roots of today at Windsor, through the foreign importation of Georgians onto the throne of the United Kingdom. A Protestant branch of Sophia, Electress of Hanover (1630–1714), was the first cousin of King Charles II of England, and, for her son, King George I, was eventually crowned King of the United Kingdom.
Unpacking this period will be a long, daunting, but very interesting task. I hope my readers stay with me till the end of this journey to its final chapter. It is a complicated and convoluted state of affairs, but I will attempt to simplify it as much as possible. No need to include Charles’s many Protestant and Catholic mistresses, his insatiable sexual appetites and any political interference by one or two of his many illegitimate offspring. Nor, for that matter, would I go through accounts of International rivalries between Catholic France and Spain to force the hand of Charles to convert and establish a front against the Protestant Dutch. I will concentrate on activities in England; otherwise, to include Scottish influences, this chapter would become a book-length chapter. It would involve not only Catholics and Protestants but also Calvinists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, and others. All vying as god's chosen.
Important to note here: the Test Acts. These were a series of penal laws passed by Parliament to ensure that only members of the Church of England held public office. They required office holders to take the Anglican communion, swear oaths of allegiance, and reject the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, effectively banning Catholics and nonconformist Protestants from civil or military positions. Much to the surprise of many in government, the Duke of York declined to put his signature to it.
Duke of York
Allegations were uncovered in late 1678 of a Popish Plot to assassinate the King and install his Catholic brother and heir, James, Duke of York, on the throne. The fallout was the succession crisis, formalised by initiating a bill in Parliament to remove the Duke of York from the royal line of succession. In the course of debates, historical memories flooded in of Catholic conspiracies, Poisonings by Catholics, attempts to blow up Parliament, and memories flooded in of killing Queen Elizabeth in an effort to install her cousin, the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots, to the throne of England. Before the final reading of the Bill, Charles dissolved Parliament and left it in abeyance. This was the time when Parliament was split, creating Tory (Conservative Party) loyalists and Whig (Liberal Party) opposition to James. This crisis acted as a crucible, dividing the English political class along lines of hereditary succession, Parliament's power, and fear of Catholic influence.
Just as well, though, on November 1677, the Calvinist William of Orange, nephew of King Charles, had married his fifteen-year-old Protestant cousin, Princess Mary, with hopes of future Protestant succession. Shortly after the wedding, a show of entrenched and pervasive anti-Catholicism, a crowd in London made an effigy of the Pope with a rosary made out of oranges around his neck. The marriage served multiple purposes. It was also a marriage of convenience, as William envisaged combining the English military resources to fight France.
Charles contracted a malaria-type fever in August 1679, though he would soon be at death’s door, he made a quick recovery. Nevertheless, that sounded a dynastic alarm had he died, with his brother, the Catholic, Duke of York, standing to inherit the crown. But waiting in the wings, the Duke of Monmouth, Charles’s alternative and popular protestant but illegitimate son, would have made trouble. To dampen any hopes, Charles ordered his son to leave England for Holland.
On numerous occasions, parliament tried to reopen the debate on York’s exclusion. Still, a series of prorogations by Charles prevented it from taking place, and the debates never reached their intended conclusion. Instead, partisan politics took to the streets, an anti-Catholic demonstration in London by up to 200,000 people, burning effigies of the Pope at Aldwych in the Strand. Memories of cutting throats of Protestants by Irish Catholics and talk of other bloody atrocities once more became mainstream. In 1680, mainly to assuage public opinion, Charles eventually opened parliament. He promised to protect Protestantism and did not intend to divert the line of hereditary succession, and “I have done all possible for me to do... and leave you so when I die”.
Duke of Monmouth, King Charles ' illegitimate son
At this time, stepping back a little, Whig members of Parliament were advancing an argument in favour of the King’s natural son, James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, and irresponsible initiatives aimed at public opinion. The king angrily dismissed them, calling them a cause of chaos, fearing that such ideas might return England to Civil War. Moreover, the King quashed further ideas, circulating at the time, that he had married Monmouth’s mother, which was gaining ground, in an effort to block his brother, James. The argument ran that, though Monmouth was illegitimate, Queen Elizabeth I was also illegitimate, since her Father, Henry VIII, never divorced his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and his subsequent marriage to Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn, was therefore unlawful. Hence, the non-recognition of Monmouth, as defined by Catholic theologians, should be ignored. On his part, Monmouth took an extensive public relations tour through the Western Counties of England. He was well received and proved very popular with the crowd.
Recognised as a true Protestant Englishman. Apparently, while on tour, he ‘touched for the king’s evil’, presenting his capacity to heal sufferers of glandular conditions, a means for further promoting his royal lineage.
But with the Duke of York, whose hereditary position was still intact, the motion in Parliament discussed the possibility of curtailing the power of the crown. William of Orange, in efforts to increase his visibility, and who, in his own rights as well as his wife’s right in line to the English Crown, objected to such schemes. With that in mind, William visited London to have it out with his uncle Charles. The meeting went nowhere, and William returned to the Hague without gaining support. But in the meantime, a plot to kill the King was underway, organised by some Whig members of Parliament led by the Duke of Monmouth. The ‘Rye House Plot’ was hatched to ambush the King and his brother on their return from a horse race meeting at Newmarket. To Charles, the Whigs were now considered Republican rebels, and he arrested and executed a number of them. Monmouth escaped to live another day, but his days were numbered.
In February 1685, Charles suddenly became ill and died peacefully, suffering from a stroke from the effects of chronic kidney disease. It was rumoured he died a Catholic, having secretly received into the Catholic Church and been buried in Westminster Abbey. James, his Catholic brother, became the first openly Catholic monarch of England since Mary Tudor, the daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. On the day of Charles' death, James II, Catholic King of England, confirmed his intention to preserve his government in both Church and State and to uphold the Anglican Establishment. Yet at the same time, while attending Mass two days later, he left the chapel doors open, endorsing his duty to God, not concealing his religion in favour of his Protestant subjects.
King James II of England and VII of Scotland
Aged fifty-one, James II and VII of Scotland, known for his outstanding military service. Although his conversion to Catholicism was regrettable, his legitimacy was unquestioned. English Parliament, though disgruntled, was happy with the thought, his two Protestant daughters ready to succeed him and anticipating that his reign would be relatively short. A magnificent feast followed the coronation service, made up of 1,445 separate dishes and an impressive fireworks display on the River Thames. Addressing his new Parliament, he confirmed his commitment to preserving the Church of England. That, however, did not stop some Whig Republican hopefuls, committed to toppling the new King. An army led by the Duke of Monmouth, with a contingent of Scottish Presbyterians, led an attack on his Catholic uncle. The Monmouth army was easily defeated by government forces at the Battle of Sedgemoor, marking the last pitched battle to take place on English soil. Monmouth was executed by decapitation on Tower Hill on July 15, 1685.
Having inherited an army of 9,000 early in his reign, James steadily built an army of 20,000 paid soldiers stationed at Hounslow Heath, insisting “a good force of well-disciplined troops in constant pay, that can defend us from either home or abroad”. There was concern at the sizeable number of Catholic officers within the army ranks in breach of the Test Acts (see above). James was beginning not only to exert his authority but also to contrive a gradual increase in the percentage of Catholics serving the crown. Those dissenters were dismissed, including army officers and judges. He felt it was time to do away with the Test Acts. James, like his father before him, began to interfere with religion by issuing instructions on how all sermons should be delivered. It did not take long before many in Parliament realised that his directions were beginning to echo those of his father’s interferences. This time, even worse, because all signs of the Catholic Counter-Reformation were beginning to take place, down to prosecuting those preaching anti-catholic sermons.
Behind a thin veil of articulating a clear wish to enforce liberty of conscience, he also sought the removal of the Penal Laws (religious monopoly of the Church of England) and the revocation of all requirements for religious qualification for office-holding, as stated in the Test Acts. At that time, there were great upheavals in Catholic France, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had given the people of France freedom of conscience and protected the civil rights of French Protestants. The suspicions were that the French King acted in this way with the approval of the English King. As a consequence, following an incident in May 1686, around 2,000 protestants were massacred, and many of those surviving Huguenots escaped to the safety of Protestant Switzerland, Holland and England.
It did not take very long to realise that James's policies appeared to align with the demands of his French cousin, Louis. Disgruntled calls were heard that the King ought to work productively with his parliaments and ally with the Dutch rather than France. It was perceived that James' primary concern was to please the Jesuits, actions that could kindle the fire in his own kingdom. His reliance on Jesuitical counsel also undermined international cooperation when he declared exaggerated religious festivities following the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I's recapture of the Hungarian capital, Buda, from the Ottomans, and the preservation of Vienna. For political reasons, such celebrations did not go down well with Louis XIV, who was by now called the ‘Christian Turk’. But that notwithstanding, James confirmed his keenness to reintegrate England with the Continental Catholics. One such mission was to fail with the Pope on account that the Vatican will not accept an ambassador of a sovereign who remained the head of a heretical church.
The Catholic question
By all observations, James was intent on converting England to Catholicism. He was in a hurry, as age was creeping up on him, and must safeguard the interests of his co-religionists before the crown passed to his Protestant daughter, Mary. By sovereign authority, he imposed toleration in Scotland, removing all constraints on freedom to worship. That did not go down well, since this was translated by the Scots Whigs, who said either obey or be burned as heretics. While at it, he suspended all penal laws in England, facilitating freedom of religious worship and enabling individuals to hold civil and military office without submitting to the Test Acts.
In August 1687, King James visited St. Winefride’s chapel in Flintshire, reputedly the oldest visited site of pilgrimage in England. He sought the Saint’s intercession on behalf of his wife in producing a son and heir. Exactly to the day, just nine months after his wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a son, James, on 10 June 1688. Naturally, James's new hereditary rights trumped his Protestant daughters' rights. Catholic Europe rejoiced at the news of the birth, but it was unclear how the people of England received it. All hopes that Catholicism was short-lived and that James’s Protestant daughters, Mary and Anne, would recede in line have been dashed, as Mary’s husband, William of Orange, is now fourth in line of succession.
While Mary of Modena was pregnant, her belly looked a bit suspicious, and there may have been foul play. A week after the Prince’s birth, Mary wrote to her sister Anne that she could never be certain whether the child was true or false. As rumours spread that the baby prince might be a commoner’s child, it was perceived as an international Popish plot to put the Protestant Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, out of joint.
Not wasting much time after the birth, a formal and explicit invitation was sent to William to intervene in England, endorsed by several prominent members of the inner council and several parliamentarians. It was a letter assuring the Prince of Orange that 90% of the English desired a change. They assured him that not ‘not one in a thousand here believes the child to be the queen’s. Given the political and strategic incentives, William's consideration of invading England in response to the invitation is vital. No doubt, James can build a consortium of Catholic countries to declare war on the Dutch. Alternatively, William can engage with the English Army against expansionist France and the Catholic Irish. A decision that had all the hallmarks of political and hereditary motives behind it.
William of Orange
It was winter time, not exactly a good time of year to cross the Channel, at the best of times, a dangerous crossing. The thoughts of the Spanish Armada of 1688, when the Spanish attempted to invade Elizabethan England, resulted in catastrophe with massive loss of Spanish lives and an embarrassing turnaround for the Spanish fleet. William believed he had been called to the throne of England by God, and he had no time to waste.
William amassed an invasion force of around 400 ships, 15,000 soldiers and 4,000 horses. He anchored at Torbay in Devon on the 5th of November 1688. This was also the start of the Gin Craze in England, introduced by William's gin-drinking soldiers. The date of his landing was to coincide with Guy Faulk's attempt to blow up Parliament. Also marked the first foreign invasion of England since the Norman Conquest in 1066 by another William. William entered Exeter on 9th November. To confront the invading army, James left Windsor and arrived at Salisbury on 19th November with around 30,000 soldiers. Nothing much came of the possible confrontation, since James suffered from a series of nosebleeds. At the same time, morale was sapped by serial desertions and major pro-Orangist risings in many parts of the country, as far north as Cheshire. The King ordered a retreat to London, summoning parliament. He appointed three emissaries to meet William, who by then had reached Hungerford in Berkshire, issuing several anti-Catholic declarations on the way, increasingly looking like a revolution. The Glorious Revolution.
After arranging passage to France for the queen and Prince of Wales on 9 December, James secretly fled Whitehall two nights later. On the back of the flight, a frenzy of rioting erupted across London. Chapels were destroyed, Carmelite convents ransacked, and Catholic ambassadors of Spain and France were attacked. Books, jewels and valuables were either destroyed or looted from the houses of prominent Catholics. James hadn’t gone very far, though with a dishevelled beard, he was recognised in the Isle of Sheppey in Kent. Then a military escort returned him from Faversham, Kent, back to London. But William’s instructions were no longer requests but commands. James, who realised no longer had authority, travelled back to Kent, reached Rochester on 19 December and four days later, sailed for France, arriving at Louis XIV’s court on Christmas Eve 1688.
With no King in sight, there can not be a parliament. A convention was opened instead, where the Prince of Orange laid the foundation for a full house of parliamentary members, for firm security of the Protestant religion, and for England’s laws and its liberties—also agreed that the King’s withdrawal to France meant an effective abdication. William also insisted that taking the crown of England was by his rights in the line of heredity, not by conquest. He rejected the idea of a possible regency solely in his wife Mary, James’s daughter, and is not prepared to hold the Kingdom of England by apron strings. His wife also made it clear she will not accept the crown in her sole capacity.
Finally, ‘The Declaration of Rights’ articulated the framework of the joint King and Queen of England and Ireland. William and Mary were crowned on 14 February 1689; a few days later, they addressed the House of Lords and gave royal assent to legislation that converted the Convention into a Parliament. Having learned that William was taking action to protect Scots' safety by sending troops to northern England and dispatching warships to protect the coast, and having claimed that James was a professed Papist, the Convention members offered the Scottish crown jointly to William and Mary on 11 April.
Trouble, however, was not far behind. France has now declared war on the Dutch provinces, raising the risk that Ireland will join France to attack England. In May, English MPs supported William’s declaration of war against France, joining the Grand Alliance of the United Provinces and the Holy Roman Empire. A new front opened in Ireland, where James, supported by French troops, armour, and ships, was by now proclaimed King of Ireland. To counter such irritation and distraction, William set out to meet him, landing at Carrickfergus on the Antrim coast, accompanied by a fleet of about 300 ships and 36,000 troops. Victory was achieved against the Jacobites (Jacobus, Latin for James), at the Battle of Boyne on 1 July 1690. James retreated and left Dublin for France on 2 July. William, having returned to London, received news that the French had defeated the Anglo-Dutch opponents, raising alarm that the French fleet was preparing an invasion of England. But finally, when the entire of Ireland was eventually subdued, William ensured a final victory by the Grand Alliance, but that was still a long way off.
Back in England, holding the crown of England was not smooth sailing for William and Mary. It was a joint monarchy, although more weight was given to asserting Mary Stuart’s hereditary right to succeed her father, which was central to defending the Revolution. But the refusal of James VII and II and his descendants to renounce their hereditary rights was proving a problem. Charges being made, the Monarchy is a Dutch conquest by an illegal invasion. So the foundation of the new regime remained fragile, but to secure his coup d’etat, he proposed the Oath of Allegiance, accompanied by the Bill of Rights in 1689. They were meant to finally seal the abolition of the Pope's spiritual authority and to secure the Protestant succession. Despite such a minimal scope, there were many non-jurors (not willing to abide by the Oath), many of whom were bishops and church of England clergy, all of whom lost their positions.
William was no Charles I
William had to hold on to Parliament. He warned that, since he has been called to hold the throne of England, he must maintain the authority placed in him. He made it clear that he is not to be treated like his great-uncle Charles I, not by the English Parliament nor by the Scottish covenanters. This meant a sizeable financial commitment for England in the Nine Years’ War against France. An annual deployment of 115,000 soldiers in continental campaigns meant a massive military expenditure. New fiscal measures were created to address that, including the establishment of the Bank of England and measures to address the financial burden. Clearly, parliamentary dysfunctionality has come to an end.
After less than five years as joint monarchs, Mary died of smallpox at the age of 32 in December 1694. News of the Queen's demise was received in England and in Europe with great sadness and grief. Church bells rang across the continent, and tributes poured in from France, Germany, Holland and elsewhere. An elaborate procession was arranged for her at Westminster Abbey, and uniquely in British history, members of both Houses of Parliament attended the royal funeral.
With the passing away of Mary, with her natural hereditary right gone, the focus was on William’s right to rule. As I said earlier, it was a joint monarchy, a first and unprecedented situation in England’s history. It provided the provisions for Mary to exercise executive power while William was fighting in Ireland without impairing his authority. Without Mary, with only Anne, her sister, the last remaining in direct line of the Stuarts, the constitutional rights are now on shaky ground. Rumours abounded; perhaps it needs reconfiguring. The English were untamed horses, who have thrown their unskilled riders many times in the last fifty years. But as many have realised, William was a skilful rider and would allow no illusions to his monarchical authority. He was the first monarch in English history to summon parliament every year of his reign. In April 1696, he introduced a new Oath of Association requiring swearers to “heartily, sincerely and solemnly profess, testify and declare that his present Majesty King William is rightful and lawful king of these realms”.
William was adamant that England was to become a key player in a multi-confessional grand alliance, with all the country’s resources mobilised to operate in the European theatre of war. On coming to the throne in 1689, his obsession to see Louis XIV of France defeated, curtailing his insatiable appetite for power, territory and glory. But in equal measure, William was accused of “sacrificing the lives of more men to his insatiable ambition than all your Mariuses and Sullas, Caesars and Pompeys put together”. In 1697, however, the ‘Peace of Ryswick’ ended the Grand Alliance’s nine-year war with France and included a commitment by Louis XIV to recognise William as the rightful king of England, Scotland and Ireland; not to support or assist William’s Jacobite adversaries and to withdraw troops from William’s ancestral enclave of Orange in Provence. Soon after, in 1700, the childless Spanish King, Carlos II, died, leaving the future control of an enormous global empire uncertain. The War of the Spanish Succession started once more, our one and only Louis XIV of France. For my purposes, I am not going there in this story.
To ensure further guarantees in the English line of succession, securing the crown to remain in Protestant hands and to extinguish hopes of all Pretenders. The Act of Settlement was introduced in 1701, legally and definitively vesting the English and Irish lines of succession in the Electress Sophia of Hanover and her descendants, and further stipulating that no future monarch could be Catholic, male, or married to a Catholic.
In March 1702, William died after suffering from a riding accident. William’s sister-in-law, childless Queen Anne, was crowned as the new queen of England. But, the Scots, holding their ground, were unhappy with Princess Sophia’s line of succession and demanded an alternative successor to the Scottish crown, unless Anglo-Scottish trade inequalities were not redressed. The English warned that unless the Scots confirmed the Hanoverian succession, they would be declared aliens in England. The Scots, bowed to pressure, invited Queen Anne to nominate commissioners to enter renewed negotiations for a closer Anglo-Scottish union. By 1706, bilateral commissions agreed on a Treaty of Union that created a single Kingdom of Great Britain, vested the succession to the British crown in the Hanoverian line, and established a single Parliament in Westminster.
Queen Anne died on 1 August 1714, at the age of forty-nine. The English thereby acquired yet another foreign king in Sophia’s oldest son, and Queen Anne’s second cousin, who became George I.
The Epilogue
The Stuart Dynasty in England was a crucible of change, war, and rebellion. By the eventual overturn of the Crown’s religious intransigence, the eventual anchoring of the Protestant faith in England after a prolonged, agonising and much shedding of blood, lasting more than one hundred years. In between, extensive shipbuilding during the interregnum, undertaken whether for piracy or privateering, formed the backbone of England’s naval power. Through this dynamic, and a tectonic shift in the lives of all involved, a proud and powerful Britain emerged.
The Stuart century—stretching from the union of the crowns in 1603 to the death of Queen Anne in 1714, and fractured by the seismic interruption of the Protectorate—was not one of serene dynasty but of violent transformation. It was a period where the very foundations of authority were tested in fire, leaving a legacy defined not by Stuart absolutism, but by the revolutionary settlements that contained it.
The Stuarts entered England believing in "the Godly Prince," a monarch who would head and harmonise the national church. Their reign ended with the very opposite. James I’s Authorised Version of the Bible (1611) was a towering cultural achievement, but his and his son Charles I’s attempts to impose liturgical uniformity on Scotland ignited the Bishops’ Wars, the spark that set off catastrophe. The Civil War was, in essence, a war of religion—Puritan against Anglican, Presbyterian against Episcopalian.
The Protectorate that followed temporarily replaced Anglican supremacy with a Puritan confessional state, equally intolerant of dissent. But Oliver Cromwell’s experiments, like the inclusive Nominated Assembly, revealed the impossibility of imposing a single religious truth on the three kingdoms.
The ultimate Stuart legacy in religion was therefore born of exhaustion: the permanent shattering of religious unity as a political necessity. The Restoration (1660) saw the Anglican Church re-established with a vengeful grip in the Clarendon Code, but Charles II’s secret Catholicism and James II’s open proselytising proved a greater threat. The Glorious Revolution (1688) decisively answered the question of religious authority: the monarch could no longer be Catholic, and the Toleration Act (1689) granted rights (though not full equality) to Protestant Nonconformists. The dream of a single, obedient religious authority under the Crown was dead, replaced by a Protestant, parliamentary state with a grudging pluralism.
Here, the Stuart and Protectorate eras achieved what they failed to do on land: build a lasting instrument of state power. The early Stuarts neglected the navy, but the Civil War saw Parliament harness maritime power. It was Oliver Cromwell, however, who made naval supremacy a strategic doctrine. The Navigation Act (1651) was an economic weapon aimed at the Dutch, insisting on English ships for English trade. This mercantilist policy was enforced by a powerful, professionalised navy.
The Restoration inherited this tool and glorified it. Charles II and James II, both naval enthusiasts, institutionalised it: Samuel Pepys at the Admiralty forged a permanent, salaried naval service. The "Royal Navy" was now a continuous, state-funded force. This power, tested in brutal wars against the Dutch and, decisively, against Louis XIV’s France, secured the British Isles, protected the expanding colonial trade, and laid the foundation for the 18th-century global empire. The Stuart legacy was a world-class navy, commanded not by feudal levies but by the state—a state now answerable to Parliament.
The Crown-in-Parliament: The Constitutional Legacy stood at the core of the Stuart drama.
The dynasty began with James I lecturing Parliament on divine right and ended with Anne as a constitutional monarch in all but name. The conflict was over the "ancient constitution" and the "final say."
The Protectorate was a failed constitutional experiment, proving that military rule (the Major-Generals) and paper constitutions (the Instrument of Government) lacked legitimacy. Its significance was negative: it showed that without the ancient form of King, Lords, and Commons, stability was elusive, but it also proved a nation could be governed—and powerfully—without a king.
The Restoration attempted a return to 1641, but it was an illusion. The crises under Charles II and James II—the Exclusion Crisis, the "Glorious Revolution"—forced the issue. The 1689 Bill of Rights was the revolutionary settlement: law was made by Parliament alone; taxation, a standing army, and the frequent use of prerogative power all required parliamentary consent. The 1701 Act of Settlement confirmed Parliament’s ultimate sovereignty by dictating the line of succession.
The final constitutional achievement was the Union of England and Scotland in 1707. Driven by security and economic pragmatism, and passed by both Parliaments, it created the new Parliament of Great Britain. This was the ultimate testament to the new order: a union forged not by royal decree, but by parliamentary statute.
In conclusion, Parliament’s Final Say. The Stuart era’s lasting achievement was the painful, violent resolution of England’s (and then Britain’s) century-long crisis of sovereignty. By 1714, the "final say" had irrevocably shifted. The monarch remained powerful, especially in foreign policy and patronage, but the doctrine was now Parliamentary Sovereignty—the Crown-in-Parliament.
Religion was tamed as a political force, subordinate to the state. A mighty navy, created for war and trade, was the executive arm of that state. And the constitution, though unwritten, was clear: Parliament, representing the political nation and property, was the ultimate source of legal authority. The Stuarts, in resisting this truth, had made it undeniable. Their legacy was not their own dynasty, but the modern British state—a centralised, fiscal-military power, governed by a parliamentary oligarchy, ready to dominate the 18th-century world.
Of course. The Stuart century was not only a political and religious crucible but also a golden age of the English mind—a period in which the turbulence of the times forged artistic and intellectual achievements of unparalleled brilliance that came to define a national spirit. The Stuart Crucible: ‘Forging a Modern State, 1603-1714’ and ‘The Mind of an Age: Flourishing in the Shadow of Upheaval’.
While kings and parliaments clashed, a parallel revolution was unfolding in the realm of thought and imagination. Shakespeare, Milton, Hobbes, Ben Johnson, Locke, and John Donne, among many others, were the champions of Drama, Philosophy, and Human Conditions. The Stuart era presided over an astonishing efflorescence in the arts and humanities, a period where English genius, grappling with the very questions tearing the nation apart—authority, freedom, faith, and human nature—produced works that would echo for centuries. This cultural ascendancy gave the emerging British state not just military power, but intellectual and moral confidence.
By 1714, as the political settlement crystallised, so too had a cultural identity. Britain stood proud not only with a sovereign Parliament and a dominant navy but also with a formidable intellectual heritage. It had given the world the English of the King James Bible and Shakespeare, the framework of constitutional liberty from Locke, and a new, scientific understanding of the cosmos from Newton. This fusion of creative genius, philosophical rigour, and empirical inquiry provided the ethos for the coming British Empire. The state built by war and statute was now animated by a confident, transformative culture, ready to project its ideas and language across the globe. The Stuart century, for all its violence and instability, had forged a modern nation in full: in its institutions, its power, and its mind.
Nemat, I let you have the last word on this story.
"Hi shloan waihid inta"
Researching facts, dates, personalities, and more has been a phenomenal learning experience. I used numerous books, Academic papers, BBC podcasts, pdf's, and, of course, having Google search at my immediate disposal is a blessing that makes writing even more pleasurable than it already is for me. It has been a mammoth task, turned out to be more daunting than I had planned. I just could not let go of this fascinating story.
My Sources:
The Stuart Age, England 1603 - 1714 - Barry Coward
Civil War, The Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1638 - 1660 - Treor Royle
The English Civil War: A People's History - Diane Purkiss
Prince Rupert, The Last Cavalier - Charles Spencer
Restoration, Charles II and his Kingdom 1660 - 1685 - Tim Harris
Revolution, The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685 - 1720 - Tim Harris
King Charles II - Antonia Fraser
Devil-Land, England under Siege - 1588 - 1688 - Clare Jackson
The Restless Republic, Britain Without a Crown - Anna Keay
Rethinking the Scottish Revolution, 1637 - 1651- Laura A.M. Stewart
BBC In Our Time Podcasts
The Covenanters
The Interegnum
The Hanovarians
-
No comments:
Post a Comment