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COVENANTER PROPAGANDA AND CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF THE PUBLIC DURING THE BISHOPS' WARS, 1638–1640*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2009

SARAH WAURECHEN
SARAH WAURECHEN*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
*
Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta, Henry Marshall Tory Building, Edmonton, AB T6G 2H4sarah.waurechen@ualberta.ca
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Abstract

This article investigates propaganda deployed in support of the Covenanting revolution in Scotland during the Bishops' Wars (1638–40). It attempts to broaden the category of ‘British’ history by focusing on discourse instead of high politics, and analyses printed tracts – complemented by select manuscript sources – to reconstruct the Covenanters' theoretical approach to creating an English public to support their cause. The novelty of the ‘explosion’ of print in England in the 1640s is now widely acknowledged, and numerous books and articles have argued about whether or not this constituted a public sphere. This article, however, presupposes a ‘space’ for public debate and focuses instead on the conceptual framework driving Covenanter appeals. It concludes that the Covenanters believed that rational debate in a public forum would expose truth, which would naturally persuade the English people to support their cause and, in turn, pressure the king into making the desired concessions. But this was not how the actual English public functioned: there was an important disparity between the theory of godly rational debate and the reality of a rather ‘wild’, competing, and self-interested plurality of publics.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 63 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

Research for this article was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Thanks are also due to Daniel Woolf and Jordan Penney for commenting on earlier drafts of this article, and to David Como for kindly providing me with an advance copy of his article.

References

1 Conrad Russell, The causes of the English civil war (Oxford, 1990); Conrad Russell, The fall of the British monarchies, 1637–1642 (Oxford, 1991).

2 Sarah Barber and Steven G. Ellis, eds., British consciousness and identity: the making of Britain, 1533–1707 (Harlow, 1995), while not criticizing Russell explicitly, highlights the danger of Anglo-centrism in the New British history that grew up in the wake of his writings. John Morrill, The nature of the English revolution (Harlow, 1993), pp. 266–7; and Peter Lake, ‘The causes of the English civil war; The fall of the British monarchies; Unrevolutionary England; by C. S. R. Russell’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 57 (1994), p. 194, highlight the problem of Russell's elitist account of politics. Finally, Shagan, Ethan, ‘Constructing discord: ideology, propaganda, and English responses to the Irish rebellion of 1641’, Journal of British Studies, 39 (1997), pp. 4–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, highlights Russell's mechanical approach to politics. This represents only a sample of the anxieties regarding the New British History.

3 Tim Harris, ‘Critical perspectives: the autonomy of English history?’, in Glenn Burgess, ed., The new British history: founding a modern state, 1603–1715 (London, 1999), pp. 266–86.

4 Knights, Mark, ‘History and literature in the age of Defoe and Swift’, History Compass, 3 (2005), pp. 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mark Knights, Representation and misrepresentation in later Stuart Britain: partisanship and political culture (Oxford, 2005).

5 Lake, Peter and Pincus, Steve, ‘Rethinking the public sphere in early modern England’, Journal of British Studies, 45 (2006), pp. 270–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Knights, Representation and misrepresentation; David Zaret, Origins of democratic culture: printing, petitions and the public sphere in early-modern England (New Jersey, 2000); Bruce Robbins, ed., The phantom public sphere (Minneapolis, MN, 1993); Michael Warner, Publics and counterpublics (New York, NY, 2005); N. Crossley and J. M. Roberts, eds., After Habermas: new perspectives on the public sphere (Oxford, 2004); Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the public sphere (Cambridge, 1992); <http://www.makingpublics.mcgill.ca>.

6 The best accounts of the Bishops’ Wars from the Scottish perspective are David Stevenson, The Scottish revolution, 1637–1644: the triumph of the Covenanters (London, 1973); and Peter Donald, An uncounselled king: Charles I and the Scottish troubles, 1637–1641 (Cambridge, 1990). From the English perspective, the best are Mark C. Fissel, The Bishops' Wars: Charles I's campaigns against Scotland, 1638–1640 (Cambridge, 1994); and Russell, The fall of the British monarchies.

7 David R. Adams, “Religion and reason in the thought of Richard Overton, the leveller” (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, 2003).

8 Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and pamphleteering in early modern Britain (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 171, 181–5.

9 Como, David, ‘Secret printing, the crisis of 1640, and the origins of civil-war radicalism’, Past and Present, 196 (2007), pp. 37–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Archibald Johnston of Wariston, A short relation of the state of the Kirk of Scotland since the reformation of religion, to the present time (Edinburgh, 1638).

11 Ibid., pp. 1, 4, 10.

12 Ibid., pp. 10–14.

13 Ibid., p. 15.

14 Anonymous, Reasons for a Generall Assemblie (Edinburgh, 1638).

15 The Five Articles of Perth were passed by the Perth General Assembly in 1618, and brought Scotland's church into closer alignment with England's. The most offensive article was that which mandated kneeling at communion.

16 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, The protestation of the Generall Assemblie of the Church of Scotland, and the noblemen, barons, gentlemen, borrow, ministers and commons (Glasgow, 1638).

17 Ibid., p. 2.

18 Ibid., pp. 7–8.

19 Gordon Donaldson, Scotland: James V to James VII (London, 1965), pp. 178–81; Roger Mason, ‘George Buchanan, James VI and the Presbyterians’, in Roger Mason, ed., Scots and Britons: Scottish political thought and the union of 1603 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 112–38, at pp. 129–31.

20 The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, An information to all good Christians within the kingdome of England (Edinburgh, 1639).

21 The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, The remonstrance of the nobility, barrones, burgesses, ministers and commons within the kingdome of Scotland (Amsterdam, 1639), p. 18.

22 Church of Scotland, The declinatour and protestation of the some some-times pretended bishops, presented in face of the last assembly, refuted and found futile, but full of insolent reproaches, and bold assertion (Edinburgh, 1639); Episcopal church in Scotland, The declinator and protestation of the arch-bishop, and bishops, of the Church of Scotland, and others their adherents within that kingdom: against the pretended General Assemblie (London, 1639).

23 Church of Scotland, The declinatour, p. 5.

24 Ibid., p. 11.

25 Kevin Sharpe, Remapping early modern England: the culture of seventeenth century politics (Cambridge, 2000), p. 22; Russell, The fall of the British monarchies; Roger Mason, Kingship and the commonweal: political thought in renaissance and reformation Scotland (East Linton, 1998), pp. 52–65.

26 Church of Scotland, The declinatour, p. 22.

27 Ibid., p. 34.

28 Ibid., pp. 38–41.

29 Scally, John, ‘Constitutional revolution, party and faction in the Scottish parliaments of Charles I’, Parliamentary History, 15 (1997), pp. 54–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; David Stevenson, Revolution and counter-revolution in Scotland, 1644–1651 (London, 1977); John Morrill, ed., The Scottish National Covenant in its British context (Edinburgh, 1990).

30 Jürgen Habermas, The structural transformation of the public sphere: an inquiry into a category of bourgeois society, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, 1989).

31 Robbins, ed., The phantom public sphere.

32 Church of Scotland, An information, pp. 4–7.

33 Ibid., pp. 12–13.

34 For a discussion of the importance of providing a ‘thing’ around which a public could gather, see Bruno Latour, ‘How to make things public’, in Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, eds., Making things public: atmospheres of democracy (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 14–43.

35 Alastair Mann argues that the Scottish printing industry was not of a capacity to meet domestic demands for printing until 1680. Alastair Mann, The Scottish book trade, 1500–1720: print commerce and print control in early modern Scotland (East Linton, 2000), p. 216.

36 Sharpe, Remapping, p. 145.

37 Charles I, By the king (London, 1639).

38 Church of Scotland, The remonstrance of the nobility, pp. 4, 6.

39 Ibid., p. 5.

40 Ibid., p. 12.

41 Raymond, Pamphlets and pamphleteering, p. 176.

42 Quentin Skinner, ‘The origins of the Calvinist theory of revolution’, in B. C. Malament, ed., After the reformation: essays in honour of J. H. Hexter (Philadelphia, PA, 1980), pp. 313–14; Mason, Kingship and the commonweal; J. H. Burns, The true law of kingship: concepts of monarchy in early-Stuart Scotland (Oxford, 1996).

43 Church of Scotland, The remonstrance of the nobility, pp. 3, 10.

44 Ibid., pp. 17–18.

45 Ibid., p. 18.

46 Lake, Peter, ‘Constitutional consensus and puritan opposition in the 1620s: Thomas Scott and the Spanish match’, Historical Journal, 25 (1982), pp. 805–25, at p. 820.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47 Russell, The fall of the British monarchies, pp. 139–42.

48 Kevin Sharpe, The personal rule of Charles I (New Haven, CT, 1992), pp. 814–15.

49 Anonymous, Information from the estaits of the kingdome of Scotland, to the kingdome of England (Edinburgh, 1640); Anonymous, A remonstrance concerning the present troubles from the meeting of the estates of Scotland, Aprill 16, unto the parliament of England (Edinburgh, 1640), p. 11; Anonymous, The intentions of the armie of the kingdome of Scotland, declared to their brethren in England (Edinburgh, 1640), p. 7.

50 Russell, The fall of the British monarchies, p. 93.

51 Anon., A remonstrance concerning, p. 15.

52 Anon., Information from the estaits, pp. 3, 20.

53 Anon., A remonstrance concerning, p. 18.

54 Ibid., p. 29.

55 Ibid., p. 21.

56 Robert Baillie, Ladensium autokatakpiΣis, or the canterburians self-conviction (Amsterdam, 1640), p. 117.

57 Ibid., pp. 121–3.

58 Ibid., pp. 126, 127.

59 Ibid., p. 8[136].

60 Anon., The intentions, p. 11.

61 Army of Scotland, The lawfulnesse of our expedition into England manifested (Edinburgh, 1640), p. 1.

62 Wariston, A short relation, p. 19; Anon., An information, p. 13.

63 Anon., The intentions, p. 15.

64 Ibid., p. 17.

65 Anon., The intentions, p. 18; Army of Scotland, The lawfulnesse, p. 5.

66 Parliament of Scotland, Information from the Scottish nation, to all the true English, concerning the present expedition (Edinburgh, 1640).

67 Richard Cust, ‘Charles I and popularity’, in T. Cogswell, R. Cust, and P. Lake, eds., Politics, religion and popularity in early Stuart Britain: essays in honor of Conrad Russell (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 235–58.

68 Peter Lake, ‘Anti-popery: the structure of prejudice’, in R. Cust and A. Hughes, eds., Conflict in early Stuart England: studies in religion and politics, 1603–1642 (Harlow, 1989), pp. 71–106; Alastair Bellany, The politics of court scandal in early modern England: news culture and the Overbury affair (Cambridge, 2002), p. 200.

69 Anon., The intentions, p. 7.

70 Anthony Milton, Catholic and reformed: the Roman and protestant churches in English protestant thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge, 1995), observes a similar phenomenon in 1630s English religious debate wherein polemical needs force both Laudians and Calvinists to increasingly extreme positions.

71 Robert Baillie, The letters and journals of Robert Baillie, i, ed. David Lang (Edinburgh, 1841), p. 188.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid., pp. 188, 199.

74 Ibid., pp. 242–3.

75 Alexander Peterkin, ed., Records of the Kirk of Scotland, containing the acts and proceedings of the General Assemblies, from the year 1638 downwards (Compendium of Church Laws, vol. 1, Edinburgh, 1838), p. 247.

76 Raymond, Pamphlets and pamphleteering, p. 183.

77 British Library (BL) Add. MS 11,045, fo. 3v; State papers domestic (SPD) 16/413/120; SPD 16/413/121.

78 SPD 16/413/21.

79 BL Add. MS 11,045, fos. 3v, 27r.

80 SPD 16/164/3; SPD 16/464/79.

81 BL Add. MS 11, 045, fos. 17–19; SPD 16/423/39.

82 Baillie, Letters and journals, p. 471.

83 Archibald Johnston, Diary of Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston, 1632–1639, ed. Georges Morison Paul (Edinburgh, 1911), pp. 359–60.

84 Russell, The fall of the British monarchies; John Adamson, The noble revolt: the overthrow of Charles I (London, 2007).

85 Sharpe, Personal rule.

86 Donald, An uncounselled king, p. 258.

87 Raymond, Pamphlets and pamphleteering; David Zaret, Origins of democratic culture, Sharon Achinstein, Milton and the revolutionary reader (Princetob, NJ, 1994); Thomas Corns, Uncloistered virtue: English political literature, 1640–1660 (New York, 1992); David Cressy, England on edge: crisis and revolution, 1640–1642 (Oxford, 2006); J. Peacey, Politicians and pamphleteers: propaganda during the English civil wars and interregnum (Aldershot, 2004).

88 English short title catalogue; Baillie, Letters and journals, p. 114.

89 Raymond, Pamphlets and pamphleteering, p. 179.

90 Anonymous, The beast is wounded, or information from Scotland, concerning their reformation (Amsterdam, 1638), pp. 8, 16, 20, 4.

91 Ibid., p. 5.

92 Baillie, Letters and journals, p. 114.

93 Ibid., pp. 6–7.

94 Ibid., pp. 4, 15.

95 Anon., The beast is wounded, p. 10.

96 Ibid., p. 14.

97 Dates from Como, ‘Secret printing’.

98 Ibid., p. 81.

99 Anonymous, The lawfulnesse of our expedition into England manifested (London, 1640), title; Anonymous, Our demands of the English lords manifested being at Rippon (London, 1640), title.

100 For a more complete account of the original Marprelate Tracts and their impact see especially: Joseph Black, ‘Pamphlet wars: The Marprelate tracts and “Martinism”, 1588–1688’ (Ph.D. thesis, Toronto, 1996); Raymond, Pamphlets and pamphleteering, pp. 27–53; Patrick Collinson, ‘Ecclesiastical vitriol: religious satire in the 1590s and the invention of puritanism’, in The reign of Elizabeth I: court and culture in the last decade (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 150–71.

101 Como, ‘Secret printing,’ p. 82.

102 SPD 16/413/42; SPD 16/397/39; SPD 395/29.

103 BL Add. MS 11,045, fo. 5v.

104 Fissel, The Bishops' Wars.

105 Baillie, Letters and journals, p. 258.

106 Calendar of state papers domestic 16/424/50.

107 Black, ‘Pamphlet wars’, p. 20.

108 Como, ‘Secret printing’, p. 79.

109 Crossley and Robarts, After Habermas.