History of the Puritans under King Charles I
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After the
In New England, immigration of what were Puritan family groups and congregations was at its peak for the middle years of King Charles's reign.
Synod of Dort to the death of Archbishop Abbot (1618–1633)
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The 1630s conflict between
As a
James died in 1625 and was succeeded by Charles, who was distrustful of the Puritans, seeing their views on church government and foreign policy as driven by political calculation, while also constituting a direct challenge to his own exercise of his
Besides
Conflict between Charles I and Puritans, 1625–1629
In 1625, shortly before the opening of the new parliament, Charles was married by proxy to Princess
George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1611, was in the mainstream of the English church, sympathetic with Scottish Protestants, anti-Catholic in a conventional Calvinist way, and theologically opposed to Arminianism. Under Elizabeth I he had associated with Puritan figures.[4] The controversy over Richard Montagu's anti-Calvinist New Gagg was still ongoing when Parliament met in May 1625, and he was attacked in Parliament by the Puritan MP John Pym. When Montagu wrote a pamphlet asking for Royal protection entitled Appello Caesarem or "I Appeal to Caesar", a reference to Acts 25:10–12, Charles responded by making him a royal chaplain.
Parliament was reluctant to grant Charles revenue, since they feared that it might be used to support an army that would re-impose Catholicism on England. The 1625 Parliament broke the precedent of centuries and voted to allow Charles to collect
The
The Anglo-French War (1627–1629) was also a military failure. Parliament called for Buckingham's replacement, but Charles stuck by him. Parliament went on to pass the Petition of Right, a declaration of Parliament's rights. Charles accepted the Petition, though this did not lead to a change in his behaviour.
The King's personal rule
In August 1628, Buckingham was assassinated by a disillusioned soldier, John Felton. Public reaction angered Charles. When Parliament resumed in January 1629, Charles was met with outrage over the case of John Rolle, an MP who had been prosecuted for failing to pay Tonnage and Poundage. John Finch, the Speaker of the House of Commons, was held down in the Speaker's Chair in order to allow the House to pass a resolution condemning the king.
Charles determined to rule without calling a parliament, thus initiating the period known as his Personal Rule (1629–1640). This period saw the ascendancy of Laudianism in England.
Laudianism
The central ideal of Laudianism (the common name for the ecclesiastical policies pursued by Charles and Laud) was the "beauty of holiness" (a reference to Psalm 29:2). This emphasized a love of ceremony and harmonious liturgy. Many of the churches in England had fallen into disrepair in the wake of the English Reformation: Laudianism called for making churches beautiful. Churches were ordered to make repairs and to enforce greater respect for the church building.
A policy particularly odious to the Puritans was the installation of
Puritans also objected to the Laudian insistence on calling members of the
, without translation.The Puritans were also dismayed when the Laudians revived the custom of keeping
The foundation of Puritan New England, 1630–1642
Some Puritans began considering founding their own colony where they could worship in a fully reformed church, far from King Charles and the bishops. This was a quite distinct view of the church from that held by the Separatists of Plymouth Colony. John Winthrop, a lawyer who had practiced in the Court of Wards, began to explore the idea of creating a Puritan colony in New England. The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony had proved that such a colony was viable.
In 1627, the existing Dorchester Company for New England colonial expansion went bankrupt, but was succeeded by the New England Company (the membership of the Dorchester and New England Companies overlapped). Throughout 1628 and 1629, Puritans in Winthrop's social circle discussed the possibility of moving to New England. The New England Company sought clearer title to the New England land of the proposed settlement than was provided by the Sheffield Patent, and in March 1629 succeeded in obtaining from King Charles a royal charter changing the name of the company to the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England and granting them the land to found the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The royal charter establishing the Massachusetts Bay Company had not specified where the company's annual meeting should be held; this raised the possibility that the governor of the company could move to the new colony and serve as governor of the colony, while the general court of the company could be transformed into the colony's legislative assembly. John Winthrop participated in these discussions and in March 1629, signed the Cambridge Agreement, by which the non-emigrating shareholders of the company agreed to turn over control of the company to the emigrating shareholders. As Winthrop was the wealthiest of the emigrating shareholders, the company decided to make him governor, and entrusted him with the company charter.
Winthrop sailed for New England in 1630 along with 700 colonists on board eleven ships known collectively as the Winthrop Fleet. Winthrop himself sailed on board the Arbella. During the crossing, he preached a sermon entitled "A Model of Christian Charity", in which he called on his fellow settlers to make their new colony a City upon a Hill,[5] meaning that they would be a model to all the nations of Europe as to what a properly reformed Christian commonwealth should look like. The context in 1630 was that the Thirty Years' War was going badly for the Protestants, and Catholicism was being restored in lands previously reformed – e.g. by the 1629 Edict of Restitution.
Emigration was officially restricted to conforming churchmen in December 1634 by the Privy Council.[6]
William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1633–1643
In 1633 the moderate archbishop
Some bishops went further than the Book of Common Prayer, and required their clergy to conform to levels of extra ceremonialism. As noted above, the introduction of
Silencing of Puritan laymen
The ejection of non-conforming Puritan ministers from the Church of England in the 1630s provoked a reaction. Puritan laymen spoke out against King Charles's policies, with the bishops the main focus of Puritan ire. The first, and most famous, critic of both
Prynne was also a critic of societal morals more generally. Echoing
, not on law. Seditious libel was one of the "equitable crimes" which were prosecuted in the Star Chamber. Prynne was found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment, a £5000 fine, and the removal of part of his ears.Prynne continued to publish from prison, and in 1637, he was tried before Star Chamber a second time. This time, Star Chamber ordered that the rest of Prynne's ears be cut off, and that he should be
A year later, the trio of "martyrs" were joined by a fourth,
Suppression of the Feoffees for Impropriations
Beginning in 1625, a group of Puritan lawyers, merchants, and clergymen (including
In 1629,
The Bishops' Wars, 1638–1640
As noted above, James had tried to bring the English and Scottish churches closer together. In the process, he had restored bishops to the Church of Scotland and forced the Five Articles of Perth on the Scottish church, moves which upset Scottish Presbyterians. Charles now further angered the Presbyterians by elevating the bishops' role in Scotland even higher than his father had, to the point where in 1635, the
The Scottish prayer book was deeply unpopular with Scottish noblemen and gentry, not only on religious grounds, but also for nationalist reasons: Knox's Book of Common Order had been adopted as the liturgy of the national church by the
In response to this challenge to his authority, Charles raised an army and marched on Scotland in the "First Bishops' War" (1639). The English Puritans – who had a longstanding opposition to the bishops (which had reached new heights in the wake of the Prynne, Burton, Bastwick, and Lilburne cases) – were deeply dismayed that the king was now waging a war to maintain the office of bishop. The First Bishops' War ended in a stalemate, since both sides lacked sufficient resources to defeat their opponents (in Charles' case, this was because he did not have enough revenues to wage a war since he had not called a Parliament since 1629), which led to the signing of the Treaty of Berwick (1639).
Charles intended to break the Treaty of Berwick at the next opportunity, and upon returning to London, began preparations for calling a Parliament that could pass new taxes to fund a war against the Scots and to re-establish episcopacy in Scotland. This Parliament – known as the Short Parliament because it only lasted three weeks – met in 1640. Unfortunately for Charles, many Puritan members were elected to the Parliament, and two critics of royal policies, John Pym and John Hampden, emerged as loud critics of the king in the Parliament. These members insisted that Parliament had an ancient right to demand the redress of grievances and insisted that the nation's grievances with the past ten years of royal policies should be dealt with before Parliament granted Charles the taxes that he wanted. Frustrated, Charles dissolved Parliament three weeks after it opened.
In Scotland, the rebellious spirit continued to grow in strength. Following the signing of the Treaty of Berwick, the General Assembly of Scotland met in Edinburgh and confirmed the abolition of episcopacy in Scotland, and then went even further and declared that all episcopacy was contrary to the
The Canons of 1640 and the Et Cetera Oath
The
The preamble to the canons claims that the canons are not innovating in the church, but are rather restoring ceremonies from the time of Edward VI and Elizabeth I which had fallen into disuse. The first canon asserted that the king ruled by
Canons against popery and Socinianism were uncontroversial, but the canon against the sectaries was controversial because it was aimed at the Puritans. This canon condemned anyone who did not regularly attend service in their parish church or who attended only the sermon, not the full Prayer Book service. It went on to condemn anyone who wrote books critical of the discipline and government of the Church of England.
Finally, and most controversially, the Canons imposed an oath, known to history as the
The Puritans were furious. They attacked the Canons of 1640 as
The Long Parliament attacks Laudianism and considers the Root and Branch Petition, 1640–1642
The elections to the Long Parliament in November 1640 produced a Parliament which was even more dominated by Puritans than the Short Parliament had been. Parliament's first order of business was therefore to move against
At his trial before the House of Lords, begun in January 1641, prosecutors argued that Strafford intended to use the Irish Catholic army against English Protestants. Strafford responded that the army was intended to be used against the rebellious Scots. Strafford was ultimately acquitted in April 1641 on the grounds that his actions did not amount to high treason. As a result, Puritan opponents of Strafford launched a bill of attainder against Strafford in the House of Commons; in the wake of a revolt by the army, which had not been paid in months, the House of Lords also passed the bill of attainder. Charles, worried that the army would revolt further if they were not paid, that the army would never be paid until Parliament granted funds, and that Parliament would not grant funds without Strafford's death, signed the bill of attainder in May 1641. Strafford was executed before a crowd of 200,000 on 12 May 1641.
The Puritans took advantage of Parliament's and the public's mood and organized the
In December 1640, the month after it impeached Strafford, Parliament had also
In March 1641, the House of Commons passed the Bishops Exclusion Bill, which would have prevented the bishops from taking their seats in the House of Lords. The House of Lords, however, rejected this bill.
In May 1641,
Unsurprisingly the debate surrounding the Root and Branch Bill occasioned a lively pamphlet controversy.
Worried that the king would again quickly dissolve Parliament without redressing the nation's grievances, John Pym pushed through an Act against Dissolving Parliament without its own Consent; desperately in need of money, Charles had little choice but to consent to the Act. The Long Parliament then sought to undo the more unpopular aspects of the past eleven years. Star Chamber, which had been used to silence Puritan laymen, was abolished in July 1641. The Court of High Commission was also abolished at this time. Parliament ordered Prynne, Burton, Bastwick, and Lilburne released from prison, and they returned to London in triumph.
In October 1641, Irish Catholic gentry launched the Irish Rebellion of 1641, throwing off English domination and creating Confederate Ireland. English parliamentarians were terrified that an Irish army might rise to massacre English Protestants. In this atmosphere, in November 1641, Parliament passed the Grand Remonstrance, detailing over 200 points which Parliament felt that the king had acted illegally in the course of the Personal Rule. The Grand Remonstrance marked a second moment at which a number of the more moderate, non-Puritan members of Parliament (e.g. Viscount Falkland and Edward Hyde) felt that Parliament had gone too far in its denunciations of the king and was showing too much sympathy for the rebellious Scots.
When the bishops attempted to take their seats in the House of Lords in late 1641, a pro-Puritan, anti-episcopal mob, probably organized by
In this period, Charles became increasingly convinced that a number of Puritan-influenced members of Parliament had treasonously encouraged the Scottish Covenanters to invade England in 1640, leading to the Second Bishops' War. As such, when he heard that they were planning to impeach the Queen for participation in Catholic plots, he determined to arrest Lord Mandeville as well as five MPs, now known as the Five Members: John Pym, John Hampden, Denzil Holles, Sir Arthur Haselrig, and William Strode. Charles famously entered the House of Commons personally on 4 January 1642, but the members had already fled.
Following his failed attempt to arrest the Five Members, Charles realized that he was not only unpopular among parliamentarians, he was also in danger from London's pro-Puritan, anti-episcopal, and increasingly anti-royal mob. As such, he and his family retreated to Oxford and invited all loyal parliamentarians to join him. He began raising an army under George Goring, Lord Goring.
Parliament passed a
The Westminster Assembly, 1643–1649
In 1642, the most ardent defenders of episcopacy in the Long Parliament left to join King Charles on the battlefield. However, although Civil War was beginning, Parliament was initially reluctant to pass legislation without it receiving royal assent. Thus, between June 1642 and May 1643, Parliament passed legislation providing for a religious assembly five times, but these bills did not receive royal assent and thus died. By June 1643, however, Parliament was willing to defy the king and call a religious assembly without the king's assent. This assembly, the Westminster Assembly, had its first meeting in the Henry VII Chapel of Westminster Abbey on 1 July 1643. (In later sessions, the Assembly would meet in the Jerusalem Chamber.)
The Assembly was charged with drawing up a new
The Long Parliament appointed 121 divines to the Westminster Assembly (at the time "divine", i.e. theologian, was used as a synonym for "
For its first ten weeks, the Westminster Assembly's only task was to revise the
Parties at the Westminster Assembly
The Westminster Assembly's discussions on church polity mark a definitive turning point in Puritan history. Whereas Puritans had hitherto been united in their opposition to royal and episcopal ecclesiastical policies, they now became divided over the reforms to the Church of England. The Westminster Divines divided into four groups:
- The Episcopalians, who supported a moderate form of episcopal polity and who were led by James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh;
- The Presbyterians, who favoured presbyterian polity – this position was pushed hard by the Scottish Commissioners, especially George Gillespie and Samuel Rutherford, while the most influential Englishman taking this position was probably Edward Reynolds;
- The congregationalist polity and who were led by Thomas Goodwin; and
- The Erastians, who believed that ecclesiastical polity was adiaphora, a matter indifferent, which ought to be determined by the state, and who were led by John Lightfoot.
Many issues divided the groups from each other:
- The matter of ecclesiastical polity jure divino (established by divine law) versus adiaphora (a matter indifferent, with each national church free to establish its own polity): The Erastians were the most vocal party in arguing that polity was not fixed by divine law, while the other groups were more likely to believe that their positions were dictated by the Scriptures.
- The amount of hierarchy proper in the church: The Episcopalians believed that the church should be hierarchically organized, with the bishops providing a supervisory role over other clergy. The Presbyterians believed that the church should be organized hierarchically only in the sense that the church should be governed by a series of hierarchically ordered assemblies (Sessions, Presbyteries, Synods, and at the top the General Assembly). While the Presbyterian scheme involved hierarchical ordering in the church, its proponents stressed that it did not involve a hierarchical ordering among individuals in the church, since at each level, the governing body represented the church as a whole. The Independents opposed all forms of hierarchy in the church and argued that ministers should be accountable only to their own local congregations.
- The proper relationship of religious liberty.
- The uniformity of the church's extemporaneous, offered spontaneously by the minister as he was moved by the Holy Spiritat the time of service.
The Independents Controversy, 1644
Even after the Royalists failed to attend the Westminster Assembly, the Episcopalians were probably in the majority or at least the plurality. However, the Episcopalian members of the Assembly proved less than zealous in their defense of episcopacy: when the Assembly scheduled debates and votes for the late afternoon and early evening, the Episcopalian members failed to attend, allowing the Presbyterians and Independents to dominate the Assembly's debates. In a famous
Upon their arrival, the Scottish Commissioners – Alexander Henderson, George Gillespie, Samuel Rutherford, and Robert Baillie – organized a campaign to have the Church of England adopt a presbyterian system similar to the Church of Scotland. It initially appeared that the Scottish Commissioners might be able to push through their presbyterian scheme with minimal resistance.
However, in February 1644, five members of the Assembly – known to history as the Five Dissenting Brethren – published a pamphlet entitled "An Apologetical Narration, humbly submitted to the Honorable Houses of Parliament, by Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, Sidrach Simpson, Jeremiah Burroughs, & William Bridge." This publication laid out the case for the Independent position forcefully, and made it impossible for the Scottish Commissioners to succeed in quickly creating an amicable consensus around the presbyterian position. Instead, in 1644, the Westminster Assembly became the site of heated debate between the Presbyterians and the Independents.
The Independents were the party most committed to experimental predestinarianism, the position that one can have assurance of election in this life. Experimental predestinarians tended to undergo dramatic conversion experiences. With the rise of experimental predestinarianism, there was a concomitant call among some of the godly for gathered churches. Unlike the Church of England – which theoretically encompassed everybody in England – a gathered church was made up only of those who had undergone a conversion experience. Following the suppression of Separatism in the late Elizabethan period, calls for gathered churches could only be whispered about. However, the social process of separating "the godly" from the rest of the congregation continued throughout the early seventeenth century.
When the Puritans in New England set up their own congregations, in order to be admitted to the church, one had to be examined by the elders of the church, and then make a public profession of faith before the assembled congregation before being admitted to membership. The Independents supported the New England way and argued for its adoption in England. The result would be a situation where not all English people would be members of the church, but only those who had undergone a conversion experience and made a public confession of faith. Under these circumstances, one of the major reasons why the Independents favored
The Presbyterians responded that the Independents were engaged in faction. The Presbyterians were Calvinists, like the Independents, but they understood the implications of predestination differently than the Independents. Some argued that England was an elect nation, that divine providence had chosen England as a specially called nation, as God had chosen the Israelites to be a chosen people in the Old Testament. Others argued that, while it is true that God has chosen some as elect and some as reprobate, it is impossible in this life for any individual to know whether he or she was among the elect, and that life should therefore be lived in as close of conformity to the will of God as possible. They did not approve of the Independents who thought that they were the only members of the elect in England: true, many members of the Church of England may have engaged in open and notorious sins, but for the Presbyterians, that was a sign that the state needed to step in to punish those sins, lest God visit punishments on the nation in the same way that He visited punishments on Old Testament Israel when He found them sinning.
The Independent position was in the minority at the Westminster Assembly – there were only Five Dissenting Brethren in an Assembly of roughly 120 divines – making it impossible for the Independents in the Assembly to get their position passed.
The Erastian Controversy, 1645–1646
During the next two years, a second controversy occupied time and attention of the Westminster Assembly: the controversy over
During the
The events of the 1640s caused the English legal community to worry that the Westminster Assembly was preparing to illegally alter the church in a way that overrode the Act of Supremacy. As such,
Beginning in April 1645, the Assembly shifted its attention from the Independents Controversy to the Erastian Controversy. Besides John Lightfoot, the most zealous proponent of the Erastian position was Bulstrode Whitelocke, one of the MPs serving as a lay assessor to the Assembly. Whitelock maintained that only the state – and not the church – could lawfully exercise the power of excommunication.
In October 1645, the Scottish Commissioners succeeded when the Long Parliament voted in favour of an
This decision provoked protests from the Presbyterian party. The
The Presbyterian party initiated a massive public relations campaign and it was during 1646 that many of the major defenses of Presbyterianism were published, beginning with Jus Divinum Regiminis Ecclesiastici ; or, The Divine Right of Church Government Asserted and Evidenced by the Holy Scriptures. By sundry Ministers of Christ within the City of London, published in December 1646. One of the Scottish Commissioners,
The Presbyterian party also used their strength in London to petition the Parliament in favour of their position.
Although in August 1645, Parliament had passed an ordinance expressing its intent to establish
The Independent party was angry that Parliament continued enforcing religious conformity. The most famous expression of the Independents' despondency at the Long Parliament's actions was John Milton's poem "On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament". Milton argued that the Long Parliament was imitating popish tyranny in the church; violating the biblical principle of Christian liberty; and engaging in a course of action that would punish godly men. He concluded the poem with the line, "New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large" (a play on words since in English, the word "Priest" emerged as a contraction of the Greek word "Presbyter", but also claiming that the Presbyters under the Long Parliament's plan would be worse than the Catholic and Laudian priests whom Puritans abhorred).
The creation of the Westminster Standards, 1641–1646
At the same time that the Westminster Assembly had been debating ecclesiology, they had also been reviewing worship and doctrine. These aspects generated less controversy amongst the divines.
Tasked with reforming the English liturgy, the Assembly first considered simply adopting
The service opened with a reading of a passage from the
In 1643, the Long Parliament had ordered the Westminster Assembly to draw up a new
The Long Parliament approved the Directory of Public Worship in 1645. The Westminster Confession was presented to Parliament in 1646, but the House of Commons returned the Confession to the Assembly with the instruction that proof texts from Scripture should be added to the Confession. This version was resubmitted to Parliament in 1648, and, after a rigorous debate (during the course of which some chapters and sections approved by the Assembly were deleted), the Confession was ratified by the Long Parliament. The Larger Catechism was completed in 1647, the Shorter Catechism in 1648, and both received the approval of the Westminster Assembly and the Long Parliament.
Since the Westminster Standards had been produced under the eye of the Scottish Commissioners at the Westminster Assembly, the Scottish had no problem ratifying the Westminster Standards in order to keep Scotland's commitment to England under the
Its work being completed, the Westminster Assembly was dissolved in 1649.
Oliver Cromwell and the Independent ascendancy in the New Model Army
Parliamentary forces had initially fared poorly against royalist forces: the first major battle of the war, the Battle of Edgehill on 23 October 1642, was inconclusive, as was the First Battle of Newbury of 20 September 1643. As noted above, as a result of their failure to defeat the king on the battlefield, in the wake of the First Battle of Newbury, the Long Parliament entered into an alliance with the Scottish, which resulted in the Solemn League and Covenant (by which the Long Parliament agreed to establish presbyterianism in England), and with the war being entrusted to a joint committee of Scottish and English known as the Committee of Both Kingdoms. With the addition of the Scottish forces, the parliamentarians won a decisive victory at the Battle of Marston Moor on 2 July 1644.
The most successful parliamentary cavalry commander had been Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell now approached the Committee of Both Kingdoms with a proposal. He had come to the conclusion that the military system was untenable because it relied on local militias defending local areas. Cromwell proposed that Parliament create a new army that would be deployable anywhere in the kingdom and not tied to a particular locality. After the Second Battle of Newbury of 27 October 1644, where parliamentary forces greatly outnumbered royalist forces and yet parliamentary forces were barely able to defeat the royalist forces, Cromwell redoubled his arguments in favor of creating a new army. At this point, most of the leaders in the parliamentary army were Presbyterians who supported the Presbyterians at the Westminster Assembly. Cromwell, however, had also been following the Westminster Assembly and sided with the Independents. Cromwell thought that the Presbyterians in the army – notably his superior, Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester – opposed his proposal to create a new and more effective army mainly because they wanted to make peace with the king. He also thought that the army's supreme commander, Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, shared Manchester's views. Cromwell, however, felt that parliamentary forces should seek total victory over the royalists, and since he distrusted Charles, he felt that Charles should have no role in any post-war government.
Cromwell, who was an MP as well as a military commander, outmaneuvered his enemies in the army. On 9 December 1644, Cromwell introduced a bill in Parliament saying that no member of either the House of Commons or the House of Lords could retain his position as a military commander while serving as a member of Parliament. Members would have to choose: either resign from Parliament or resign from the army. Cromwell's bill was passed by the House of Commons but rejected by the House of Lords in January 1645, who were worried that this would mean that no nobleman could serve as a commander in the army. To assuage this worry, Cromwell re-introduced his bill with a provision saying that, if Parliament wished, it could re-appoint to the army any parliamentarian who resigned from the army if it so chose. The Lords were ultimately persuaded by Cromwell, and on 13 January 1645 passed this bill, known now as the Self-denying Ordinance.
At roughly the same time, on 6 January 1645, the Committee of Both Kingdoms approved Cromwell's request and authorized the creation of the New Model Army. In the wake of the Self-denying Ordinance, Essex and Manchester resigned from the army in order to retain their positions in the House of Lords. Cromwell, instead, resigned from the House of Commons rather than forfeit his position in the army. Thus, when the New Model Army was organized under Sir Thomas Fairfax, Cromwell was the most senior army commander left in the army. Fairfax therefore leaned on Cromwell as his number-two during the organization of the New Model Army. Cromwell worked to ensure that no Presbyterians were recruited to the New Model Army, and that Independents were encouraged to join the New Model Army. Cromwell had thus created a situation where the Presbyterians dominated the Long Parliament, but the Independents dominated the New Model Army.
At the Battle of Naseby on 16 June 1645, the New Model Army achieved a decisive victory over royalist forces. A number of subsequent battles were needed to defeat the royalist forces. In May 1646, Charles surrendered himself to Scottish forces at Southwell, Nottinghamshire.
Entering 1647, the leaders of the Long Parliament and the Scottish favored peace with Charles and a restoration of Charles to power as a
The Second English Civil War (1648–1649) and the Regicide (1649)
In summer and fall 1647, Henry Ireton and John Lambert negotiated with both houses of parliament and eventually the Army and Parliament reached agreement on a set of proposals, known as the Heads of Proposals, which were presented to Charles in November 1647. The main propositions were
- Royalists had to wait five years before running for or holding an office.
- The Book of Common Prayer was allowed to be read but not mandatory, and no penalties should be made for not going to church, or attending other acts of worship.
- The sitting Parliament was to set a date for its own termination. Thereafter, biennial Parliaments were to be called (i.e. every two years), which would sit for a minimum of 120 days and maximum of 240 days. Constituencies were to be reorganized.
- Episcopacywould be retained in church government, but the power of the bishops would be substantially reduced.
- Parliament was to control the appointment of state officials and officers in the army and navy for 10 years.
Charles, however, rejected the Heads of Proposals.
Instead, Charles negotiated with a faction of Scottish Covenanters and on 26 December 1647, signed The Engagement, a secret treaty with the group of Scottish Covenanters who became known as the Engagers. Under the Engagement, Charles agreed that episcopacy should be suppressed in the Church of England, and he agreed to support presbyterianism for three years, after which a permanent solution to the question of the church's polity could be worked out. In exchange, the Engagers agreed to bring an army of 20,000 into England to suppress the New Model Army and restore Charles to the throne. This led to the Second English Civil War. The royalist forces were defeated decisively at the Battle of Preston on 17–19 August 1648.
The Independents in the Army argued that the King was "Charles Stuart, that man of blood" who deserved to be punished, and that the outcome of the First English Civil War had been proof of God's judgment against Charles. Taking up arms after that judgment had been rendered resulted in the shedding of innocent blood. The leaders of the army therefore drafted The Remonstrance of the Army in November 1648, calling on the Long Parliament to execute Charles and to replace hereditary monarchy in England with an elective monarchy. When the Long Parliament rejected the Army's Remonstrance, the Army Council would take decisive action.[7]
On Wednesday 6 December Colonel Thomas Pride’s Regiment of Foot took up position on the stairs leading to the House. Pride stood at the top of the stairs.[8] As MPs arrived, he checked them against the list provided to him; Lord Grey of Groby helped to identify those to be arrested and those to be prevented from entering.[9] Pride's Purge excluded all but about 200 members of the about the 500 members who were entitled to sit before the purge.
After the Purge, the remaining members (who were sympathetic to the Independent party and the Army Council)—henceforth known as the
The execution of Charles I would be the lens through which the Puritan movement was viewed for generations. For its opponents, the outcome confirmed that Puritanism ultimately led to violent rebellion, and that there was a straight line from religious fanaticism to regicide. The largest single group of Puritans, the Presbyterians, had in fact opposed the regicide, but to the supporters of the king and of episcopacy, this seemed like too fine a distinction. For many Independents, the regicide was entirely justified: Charles was a man who had been a tyrant and who defied the will of God and therefore had to be punished.
Literary exchanges over the regicide occurred after royalists published
Footnotes
- ^ A perspective summarised in 1641 by Francis Rous; "For Arminianism is the span of a Papist, and if you mark it well, you shall see an Arminian reaching to a Papist, a Papist to a Jesuit, a Jesuit to the Pope, and the other to the King of Spain. And having kindled fire in our neighbours, they now seek to set on flame this kingdom also."[1]
References
- ^ Hunneyball 2010.
- ^ Patterson 1997, p. 291.
- ^ Gardiner 1892, pp. 185–194.
- ^ Lee 1885, pp. 5–20.
- ^ "Bible Gateway passage: Matthew 5:14-16 - New International Version". Bible Gateway. Retrieved 16 May 2023.
- ^ Gardiner 1891, pp. 167, 172 (fn 1).
- ^ Anonymous 1911.
- ^ Firth 1898, p. 349.
- ^ Bradley 1890, p. 206.
Sources
- Anonymous (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 22 (11th ed.). p. 315.
- Bradley, Emily Tennyson (1890). . In Stephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney (eds.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 23. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 206, 207.
Firth, Charles Harding (1898). "Pride, Thomas". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 56. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 349.- Gardiner, Samuel Rawson (1892). . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 32. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 185–194.
- Gardiner, Samuel Rawson (1891). History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 1603-1642. Vol. 8 (New ed.). London, New York, Longmans, Green, and Co. pp. 167, 172.
- Hunneyball, Paul (2010). ROUS, Francis (1581–1659), of Landrake, Cornw.; later of Brixham, Devon, Eton, Bucks. and Acton, Mdx; in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1604–1629. CUP. ISBN 978-1107002258.
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