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The Religious Context of the English Civil War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

John Morrill
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Extract

LENGTHY reports survive of speeches by several members of the Long Parliament for 9 November 1640, at the end of the first week of the session. The future royalist militant, George Lord Digby is reported to have begun his address by saying that:

you have received now a solemn account from most of the shires of England of the several Grievances and Oppressions they sustain, and nothing as yet from Dorsetshire: Sir I would not have you think that I serve for a Land of Goshen, and that we live there in sunshine, whilst darkness and plagues overspread the rest of the land

The future royalist moderate Sir John Culpepper is reported to have begun: I stand not up with a Petition in my hand, I have it in my mouth, and he enumerated the grievances of his shire beginning with the great increase of papists and the obtruding and countenancing of divers new ceremonies in matters of religion. The future Parliamentarian moderate, Harbottle Grimston, said that these petitions which have been read, they are all remonstrances of the general and universal grievances and distempers that are now in the state and Government of the Church and Commonwealth. The future Parliamentarian radical Sir John Wray said:

All in this renowned senate, I am confident, is fully fixed upon the true Reformation of all Disorders and Innovations in Church or Religion, and upon the well uniting and close rejoining of the poor dislocated Great Britain. For, let me tell you Mr Speaker, that God be thanked, it is but out of joint and may be well set by the skilful chyrurgeons of this Honourable House.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 34 , December 1984 , pp. 155 - 178
Copyright
Copyright Royal Historical Society 1984

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References

1 Rushworth, J., Historical Collections (7 vols., 1659 1701), iv. 30Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., iv. 33.

3 Ibid., iv. 34.

4 Ibid., iv. 40.

5 S. Lambert, The Opening of the Long Parliament, Hist. Jnl. (forthcoming).

6 Existing impressions of the Short Parliament will be transformed by the availability of the very full parliamentary diary of Sir Thomas Aston. I am grateful to Judith Maltby for allowing me to see her full transcript of this very important diary which she is preparing for publication. It is the property of Mr Howard Talbot.

7 E.g. Manning, B.S., The Aristocracy and the Downfall of Charles I, in Politics, Religion and the English Civil War, ed. Manning, B.S. (Manchester 1973), 3782Google Scholar; Roberts, C., The Earl of Bedford and the Coming of the English Revolution, Jnl. Mod. Hist., 49 (1977)Google Scholar; Christianson, P., The Peers, the People and Parliamentary Management in the First Six Months of the Long Parliament, Jnl. Mod. Hist., 49 (1977)Google Scholar; Lambert, Opening of Long Parliament.

8 The recent critique by Clive Holmes, The County Community in Stuart Historiography, Jnl. Brit. Studs., 19 (1980) 5473 lists the main corpus of recent work. What follows is based on that corpus, bearing Holmes' strictures in mindGoogle Scholar.

9 For a recent survey of work on Caroline patronage and faction see Sharpe, K., Faction at the Early Stuart Court, History Today, 33 (1983), 3946Google Scholar. The last phrase is from Roots, Ivan, The Central Government and the Local Community in The English Revolution 16001660, ed. Ives, E.W. (1968), 42Google Scholar.

10 Morrill, S., The Revolt of the Provinces (1976), 2430, 14450Google Scholar; Holmes, , County Community, 658Google Scholar.

11 E.g. Morrill, , Revolt, 14752Google Scholar.

12 Fletcher, A., The Outbreak of the English Civil War (1981), 369406Google Scholar.

13 Hirst, D., Revisionism Revised: Early Stuart 'Parliamentary HistoryThe Place of Principle, Past & Present, 92 (1981), is the most cogent of many recent critiques of the revisionist approachGoogle Scholar.

14 See Morrill, J.S. and Walter, J.D., Order and Disorder in the English Revolution in Order and Disorder in early modem England, eds. Fletcher, A. and Stevenson, J. (Cambridge, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

15 Lambert, Opening of the Long Parliament (forthcoming). Her account of the slowness of the Houses to take up legislative redress of grievance is very telling. But I cannot agree with her that this is evidence of a house deeply divided over the need for such redress from the outset.

16 This is based principally upon a reading of the following: Rushworth, iv. passim; Nalson, J., An Impartial Collection of the great affairs of State from the beginning of the Scotch Rebellion in the year 1639 (2 vols, 1682 1683) passim and the parliamentary journal of Sir Simonds d'Ewes (BL, Harl. MS 1635, for which the period up to March 1641 and for the period November 1641 to March 1642 have been published in three separate volumes)Google Scholar.

17 Fourteen of the thirty (reconstructed from the facsimile edition of the Privy Council Registers, PRO, PC 25254).

18 Jones, W.J., Politics and The Bench (1972), 13743, 199214;Google ScholarSomers Tracts, ed. Scott, Sir Walter (13vols., 1809 1815), iv. 130, 3008;Google ScholarRushworth, v. 31844.

19 The Journal of Sir Simonds d'Ewes from the Beginning of the Long Parliament to the Opening of the Trial of the Earl of Strafford, ed. Notestein, W. (New Haven, 1923), 1920Google Scholarand passim.

20 A committee was set up to investigate complaints against Lords Lieutenant and their deputies, but it appears never to have reported (Rushworth, iv. 989).

21 This paragraph and the succeeding ones are a synthesis of much reading in primary and secondary sources. The most influential of the latter include Professor Collinson's, P.The Religion of Protestants (Oxford, 1982), Godly People (1983)Google Scholar, especially chapters 4, 6, 20, and his Birkbeck lectures in Cambridge of Lent 1981 (as yet unpublished).

22 Tyacke, N.R.N., Arminianism in England in Religion and Polities, University of Oxford D.Phil, thesis (1968), and cf.Google ScholarWhite, P., The Rise of Arminianism Reconsidered Past & Present, 101 (1983), 3454CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The best work on Laud's own thought remains Hutton, W.H., William Laud (1895)Google Scholar.

23 See also his statement, in reply to Lord Saye and Sele, that almost all of them (the Puritans) say that God from all eternity reprobates by far the greater part of mankind to eternal fire, without any eye to their sins. Which opinion my very soul abominates. The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God William Laud, ed. Bliss, J. (7 vols, 1853), vi. 133Google Scholar.

24 Sharpe, K., Archbishop Laud, History Today, 33 (1983)Google Scholar is correct to see Laud as consciously a traditionalist; but by all evaluations, except Laud's own, he was stressing and imposing (often neglected) aspects of the Elizabethan church at the expense of other traditions and much established practice.

25 This view owes much to the ideas of Patrick Collinson in his Birkbeck lectures.

26 For key letters and instructions of Laud in relation to these issues, see Laud's Works, ed. Bliss, , v. 321, 324, 337, 345, 351, 355, 361, and vi. 310, 330, 332, 338, 341Google Scholar.

27 Rushworth, iv. 1223.

28 It is not true, as has been often asserted, that the managers of the Parliament sought to keep contentious ecclesiastical issues out of the Houses until after the secular reforms were achieved. See, for example, the willingness to escalate religious issues in Journal of the House of Commons (henceforth CJ), ii. 25, 267, 35, 41, 52, 54, 71 etc; d'Ewes, ed. Nortestein, 4, 5, 16, 17, 18, 22, 245, etc.

29 For a full discussion of this, see J.S. Morrill, The Attack on the Church of England in the Long Parliament (forthcoming, in a Festschrift).

30 Synodalia:A Collection of Articles of Religion, Canons and proceedings in Convocation in the Province of Canterbury, ed.Cardwell, E. (2 vols., Oxford, 1842), i. 380406Google Scholar.

31 CJ, ii. 3033, 4152; d'Ewes, ed. Notestein, , 21, 702, 125, 149, 1527Google Scholar.

32 Rushworth, iv. 196.

33 Hutton, , Laud, 98102Google Scholar.

34 Lamont, W., Marginal Prynne (1963), 1127Google Scholar; Lamont, W., Godly Rule (1969), 4452Google Scholar.

35 Ewes, d' ed. Notestein, , 702, 152163, 4278Google Scholar.

36 Rushworth, iv. 197.

37 Quoted in Hutton, , Laud, 103Google Scholar.

38 Rushworth, iv. 210.

39 For the impeachment articles brought against Arundel in 1397, see Select Documents of English Constitutional History, 13071485, eds. Chrimes, S.B. and Brown, A.L. (1961), 1701Google Scholar. Arundel was impeached for issuing commissions en prejudice du roy et overtement encontre sa regalie, sa dignite, et sa corone. For the debate, see d'Ewes, ed. Notestein, , 276, 419420Google Scholar.

40 Rushworth, iv. 122.

41 Cary, Lucius, Viscount Falkland, A Speech Made to the House of Commons Concerning episcopacy (1641)Google Scholar, 4. For a discussion, see Schwartz, M.L., Lay Anglicanism and the Crisis of the English Church in the Early Seventeenth Century, Albion, 14 (1982), 15Google Scholar.

42 Calamy, E., England's Looking Glass (22 08 1641), 48Google Scholar; Marshall, S., A Sermon Before the House of Commons (17 11 1640), 40Google Scholar. It should be said that the Fast Sermons as a whole displayed an indifference amounting to contempt for secular injustices, and focused with increasing clarity on the prospects for building a New Jerusalem. I am grateful to Mr S. Baskerville for his comments on this question.

43 Abbott, W. M., The Issue of Episcopacy in the Long Parliament, Univ. of Oxford D.Phil, thesis (1981), chapter 2Google Scholar.

44 Hamilton, C. L., The Basis of Scottish Efforts to Create a Reformed Church in England 16401, Church Hist. 30 (1961), 1718CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crawford, P., Denzil, First Lord Holies (1979). 4251Google Scholar;

45 CJ, ii. 2440; d'Ewes, ed. Notestein, , 440Google Scholar, passim.

46 CJ, ii. 24, 52, 102, 124, 134; d'Ewes, ed. Notestein, , 4, 17, 130, 1724, 2323, 2409, 386, 4001, 4249Google Scholar.

47 CJ, ii. 23, 32.

48 d'Ewes, ed. Notestein, , 306Google Scholar.

49 Ibid., 2812.

50 Hart, J., The House of Lords and the Reformation of Justice 16403, Univ. of Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, forthcoming, chapter 3Google Scholar.

51 BL, Harl. MS 163 ff. 662, 669.

52 The Private Journals of the Long Parliament 3 January to 5 March 1642, eds Coates, W.H., Young, A.S., Snow, V.F. (New Haven, 1982), 3023Google Scholar.

53 BL, Harl. MS 164, ff. 88790, 895, 914; and for the rumbling battle over the declaration in the autumn, The Journal of sir Simonds d'Ewes from the First Recess of the Long Parliament to the withdrawal of King Charles from London, ed. Coates, W.H. (New Haven, 1942), 166Google Scholar.

54 Shaw, W. A., A History of the English Church during the Civil War and Under the Commonwealth (2 vols, 1900), i. 1121Google Scholar; Abbott, Episcopacy, passim.

55 The following is based not simply on the documents themselves (for which see Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, ed. Gardiner, S.R. (3rd edn, Oxford, 1906), 2457, 24954)Google Scholar, but also on the debates which arose from them (see Private Journals, eds Coates etal.), 2915, 31315, 33440, 54450; BL, Harl. MS 163, ff. 42786; Rushworth, iv. 51650, 691735.

56 I recognise that this is highly contestable view. Might not the prospective leaders of the parliamentary cause have deliberately played down their radicalism for tactical reasons, for fear of alienating moderate opinion and losing the initiative? This is the very influential view of Hexter, J.H., The Reign of King Pym (New Haven, 1940), 130Google Scholar and passim. I prefer the view expressed here because (i)they displayed no such reticence on religious matters despite the fact that it cost them moderate support (ii)their private thoughts appear to reflect their public statements (iii)their rhetorical reticence led to a reticence of action which threatened the success of the military operations.

57 E.g. Schwoerer, L., The Fittest Subject for a King's Quarrel: an essay on the Militia Controversy, Jnl. Brit. Studs., ii (1971)Google Scholar;Tuck, R., 'The Ancient Law of Freedom: John Selden and the Civil War, in Reactions to the English Civil War, ed. Morrill, J.S. (1982), 13764Google Scholar.

58 BL, Harl. MS 164, ff. 858, 876; Journal of the House of Lords (henceforth LJ), iv. 3847Google Scholar; Fletcher, , Outbreak, 767Google Scholar.

59 Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, eds Firth, C.H. and Rait, R.S. (3 vols, 1911), i. 1620Google Scholar.

60 Gardiner, , Constitutional Documents, 247Google Scholar; BL, Harl. MS 163, 247, viz. That all men ought to obey the ordinance it is not thereby implied that an ordinance of parliament hath the same vertue and efficacie that an Act hath by those words that they ought to obey, is intended that every man ought voluntarily, willingly and cheerfully to obey.

61 M. Mendle, Politics and Political Thought, 16401642, inOrigins of the English Civil War, ed. Russell, C. (1973), 21946Google Scholar; idem, Mixed Government, the Estates, and the Bishops, Washington Univ., St Louis, Ph.D. thesis (1977), 396432Google Scholar; Fortescue, G.K., Catalogue of the Thomason Tracts (2 vols, 1908), 1116Google Scholar.

62 The best discussion is probably in The Prose Works of John Milton (8 vols, 1953 1982), vol. i, ed. Wolfe, D.M., 48151Google Scholar; Fletcher, , Outbreak, 91124Google Scholarand passim.

63 Fortescue, , Thomason, i. 5773Google Scholar; similarly in March 1642 there was more discussion of the prayer book than of the militia (ibid., 8697).

64 Levy, J., Perceptions and Beliefs: The Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Ori-gins and Outbreak of the Civil War, Univ. of London Ph.D. thesis (1983), passimGoogle Scholar; Dore, R.N., The Early Life of Sir William Brereton, Trans. Lanes and Cheshire Antiq. Soc, 63 (1954), 126Google Scholar; Morrill, J.S., Puritans and the Church in the Diocese of Chester, Northern Hist., 12 (1975), 1515Google Scholar; Hunt, W., The Puritan Moment (Cambridge, Mass., 1983)Google Scholar.

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66 Hibbard, C., Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill, 1983), passimGoogle Scholar; Albion, G., Charles I and the Court of Rome (1935), passimGoogle Scholar; Lamont, W., Richard Baxter and the Millennium (1979), 76123Google Scholar; Finlayson, M., Historians, Puritanism and the English Revolution (Toronto, 1983), 79119Google Scholar; Fletcher, Outbreak, passim.

66 I owe this point to conversations with Conrad Russell and to ideas contained in his unpublished paper The Causes of the English Civil War. The notion that the king had been poisoned is a common one, but more specific was the declaration of the Houses that they proceeded as though the king was suffering from nonage, natural disability or captivity (BL, Thomason Tract E 241(1), pp. 2078). Dr Ian Roy tells me that Sir Ralph Verney's (hitherto undeciphered) notes on the debate of 28 February 1642 show MPs considered the king in the position of a suicidal maniac, from whom the power of the sword must be removed. Verney Papers: Notes of Proceedings in the Long Parliament by Sir Ralph Verney (Camden 1st series, 31, 1845), 184. I am very grateful to Dr Roy for this reference.

68 See n. 66; also Stevenson, D., Alasdair MacColla and the Highland Problem of the Seventeenth Century (Edinburgh, 1981), chapter 1Google Scholar; Elliott, J.H., The year of the Three Ambassadors, in History and Imagination, eds, Pearl, V., Worden, A.B. (1981)Google Scholar.

69 Hibbard, Popish Plot, passim.

70 Stevenson, D., Scottish Covenanters and Irish Confederates (Belfast, 1981), 4365Google Scholar; Clarke, A., The Genesis of the Ulster Rising of 1641 in Plantation to Partition, ed. Roebuck, P. (Belfast, 1981), 4061Google Scholar; Lamont, , Baxter, 7787, 1169, 2302Google Scholar.

71 Morrill, J.S., The Church in England 16429 in Reactions, ed. Morrill, , 98100Google Scholar; King, P., The Episcopate during the English Civil War, Eng. Hist. Rev., lxxxiii (1968), 52630Google Scholar.

72 Wormald, B.H.G., Clarendon (Cambridge, 1951), 18Google Scholar; Bibliotheca Lindesiana: A Bibliography of Royal Proclamations of Tudor and Stuart Sovereigns, ed. Steele, R.R. (2 vols, Oxford, 1910), i, 295Google Scholar.

73 There was a generalised anxiety about the growth of popery in and around the Court from the beginning of Charles' reign, but few saw it as the principal hazard until the events of 1641. For John Pym's precociousness in this respect, see Russell, C., The Parliamentary career of John Pym, 16211629, in The English Commonwealth, eds Clark, P., Smith, A.G.R., Tyacke, N.R.N. (Leicester, 1979)Google Scholar.

74 Rushworth, iv. 287.

75 Ibid., iv. 2401.

76 LJ. iv. 5403.

77 LJ, iv. 512.

78 Rushworth, iv. 398421 (Since the paggination is awry at this point, 385415 being used twice, this reference is to 398415 and then 385421), 51650, 565-01, 691739. A good starting point is the Declaration of Causes and Remedies' (CJ, ii. 4436, reprinted in Private Journals, eds Coates etal., 54350).

79 Lamont, , Baxter, 8898Google Scholar.

80 LJ, v. 2012.

81 LJ, v. 25760.

82 Parker, H., Observations on His Majesties late Answers and Addresses (1642), 15Google Scholar.

83 Parker, H., The Contra-Replicant His Complaint to kis Majestie (1642)Google Scholar. See also his comments on the absolute and unlimitable power of the king's sword and sceptre controlled by the Queen who is in turn controlled by the Romish vice-god (Ibid., 1015). Parker's thought was dramatically affected by the Irish Rebellion. My reading of Parker has been enormously helped by discussions with Howard Moss, and by supervising his admirable B.A. dissertation.

84 Fletcher, Outbreak, passim; Morrill, , Revolt, 4650Google Scholar; Morrill, , Church in England, 89114Google Scholar; See also the forthcoming Cambridge Ph.D. thesis by Judith Maltby. For the growing articulation of the case for episcopacy within the Commons, see the debates on the Grand Remonstrance (the most heated exchanges before the final vote all concerned the church) in if Ewes, ed. Coates, , 117, 14952, 1656Google Scholar.

85 Innumerable works could be cited here. See, for example, Fletcher, , Outbreak, 22882Google Scholar; Gardiner, , History, x. 152219Google Scholar; Hexter, , King Pym, 130Google Scholar; Rushworth, iv. 7545; Whitelocke, B., Memorials of the English Affairs (4 vols, Oxford, 1853), i. 14890;Google ScholarSpalding, R., The Improbable Puritan (1979), 7897Google Scholar.

86 Fletcher, , Outbreak, 369406Google Scholar.

87 Ibid., 191227, 369407. See how well this account fits the sequence of petitions in Kent, as discussed in Woods, A.S.P., Prelude to Civil War (Salisbury, 1981), 3062, 95119, 1414, 1537Google Scholar.

88 SirAston, Thomas, A Collection of Sundry Petitions (1642)Google Scholar; Fletcher, , Outbreak, 28396Google Scholar.

89 Hutton, R., The Royalist War Effort (1981), 2232Google Scholar.

90 Morrill, J.S., Cheshire 16301660 (Oxford, 1974), 3174Google Scholar.

91 J. Levy, Harleys, chapters 46.

92 Hunt, , Puritan Moment, 235313, especially 31112Google Scholar.

93 LJ, v. 34850.