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King James of Biblical version fame
King Charles will lose his head
Oliver Cromwell, Puritan soldier-dictator
Charles II
Charles presented with a pineapple
James II
James' daughter Mary
Mary's husband, King William III
Tom Hobbes
John Locke
Isaac Newton
In the 1500s, England and the Netherlands had been progressing economically while Germany had been losing economically from the shift to trade carried by ships across seas. In England, serfdom was all but over. England had a free market in land and labor. Many of England's peasants had become successful farmers, joining with the nobility in advancing methods of growing crops.
A developing agriculture was the most significant element in economic progress, and more agriculture in England was aimed at trade rather than subsistence farming. In England, more money could be made raising sheep than growing grain, and more land was being fenced in and converted to sheep pasture to meet the growing demand for wool. England was exporting tin, lead and leather. Eighty percent of its exports was in undyed and unfinished woolen cloth, and in the wool industry, English merchants formed a free association called Merchants of the Staple. They shared a warehouse across the English Channel, in Calais, from which each merchant sold his goods abroad. Some of these merchants joined another association, called the Merchant Adventurers, which operated a warehouse in Antwerp, and in 1564 the Merchant Adventurers received a Royal Charter conferring on them a legal monopoly of cloth exports to the Netherlands and to Germany.
James VI, King of Scotland, the son of the beheaded Queen Mary of Scotland, succeeded his cousin, Elizabeth I of England in 1603, James becoming James I of England. With this, England and Scotland were united into what became known as Great Britain, while the English and Scots remained less than united in spirit.
James was a Calvinist, a devout Presbyterian, who had contempt for both Puritans and Catholics. Puritans were demanding that James "purify" the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, and James threatened to run them out of the country. Some Catholics, on the other hand, tried to assassinate James - in what was called the Gun Powder Treason - in order to establish a rule in Britain more friendly to Catholicism, with James believing that Jesuits had joined the plot.
James believed in making the Bible available to common folks, and so he commissioned a translation of the Bible into English, to be called the Authorized King James Bible - in place of three other popular versions of the Bible:the Geneva Bible, the Great Bible (an English language translation authorized by Henry VIII) and the Bishop's Bible. Beginning in 1607, forty-seven translators worked daily, and they put together their work for publication in 1611, with the Catholic Church believing the work to be less than a triumph.
For the sake of clarity, the King James translation included italicized words not found in the Hebrew or Greek texts.
As a Presbyterian, James was opposed to bishops, while bishops remained in the Anglican Church (the Church of England). As King of England, James was head of the Church of England, and, in 1612, with the support of the Anglican clergy he borrowed from the French monarchy and justified his rule on the grounds of Divine Right. He held that the king was from God and law was from the king. He was opposed to any diminution of this God-given power in the form of any power belonging to parliament, and this upset those English aristocrats and bourgeoisie who believed that tradition had given them some powers through parliament. [note]
James tried to bridge the gap between Protestants and Catholics by marrying his son to a Spanish princess, which angered his Puritan subjects. James, also King of Ireland, tried to "tame" people there by sending them English and Scot Protestants, adding to what would be 200,000 settlers in northern Ireland, mostly Lowland Scots - to be known as Ulster Scots or, in America, as Scots-Irish.
James founded the first successful British colonies on the American mainland - in Virginia, Massachusetts and Nova Scotia. He was hoping to bring the Christian religion "to such people as yet live in darkness" and to produce in America "settled and quiet government."
James survived more assassination attempts. He was handicapped physically and in speech. His drooling and otherwise unattractive appearance caused discomfort among some who tried to remove what they saw as a blight on the glory of English monarchy, by the only speedy and available means of removing a king - assassination.
From 1623 to 1625 came the last of the bad harvests that were to cause widespread starvation in England. Also in 1625 James died and was succeeded by his son, Charles, who took the title of Charles I. Charles inherited monetary inflation and a parliament that had been annoyed at seeing money wasted by the royal government. Parliament contained many Puritans who disliked Charles as they had his father, James. As head of the Anglican Church, Charles pursued anti-Calvinist policies in favor of the Catholic traditions: ritual at the alter and sacraments more than preaching predestination from the pulpit. The king's income was not adequate to pay for the operations of his bureaucracy, and the House of Commons refused to vote Charles the money he needed to keep his government operating unless he redressed grievances they had with some of his administrative and religious policies.
The parliaments of Queen Elizabeth had been rarely summoned, and when Parliament was summoned its respect for her was aided by her frugality. James' frugality had also been appreciated by Parliament, as had his reduction in corruption and his balanced budget. But Charles lost the respect of Parliament. Believing that his rule was not as absolute as he had thought it should be, he chose in 1629 to put an end to Parliament. He jailed people who objected. He scared property owners with his attempts to raise money. Charles raised customs duties. He persecuted Puritans, and he attempted to impose the Anglican Church's prayer book upon the Scottish Calvinists called Presbyterians. In 1638 the Presbyterians rebelled against this, and Charles needed the cooperation of the bourgeoisie and gentry - who had the money that he needed to combat the Scots' rebellion. In 1640, Charles reconvened Parliament. Parliament refused to vote for the money that Charles wished. Charles dismissed Parliament again, and the Scots invaded northern England, stopping only when a desperate Charles reconvened Parliament again.
To get the money he needed, Charles promised not to attempt to tax without the consent of the House of Commons, to convene Parliament at least once every three years, to refrain from arbitrary imprisonment, to refrain from quartering troops in people's homes and not to impose martial law in time of peace. Special courts that Charles had created were abolished. Parliament won the execution of Charles' minister, the Earl of Strafford, whom Parliament's members held responsible for what they saw as illegal acts between 1629 and 1640. With these victories, Parliament voted for money that was given to the Scots sitting in occupation of a part of northern England, and the Scots returned home.
Then another crisis erupted - in Ireland. Catholics rose up and slaughtered thousands of Protestants. In London, Parliament voted against collecting the money necessary for Charles to organize an army to move against Ireland's Catholics, Parliament fearing that with such an army Charles would also try to re-establish his absolute powers. Charles saw that Parliament was divided - as politicians usually are on various issues - and he moved against those members of Parliament he disliked most. He tried having five members of the House of Commons arrested. Outside of Parliament was much support for Parliament. Presbyterians ministers urged rebellion from their pulpits. In London, where Presbyterians were numerous, people rose up against Charles. Those supporting Charles tended to be aristocrats, called Cavaliers. Many in Parliament, especially in the House of Lords, went over to the side of the king. On the other side remained the London revolutionaries and what was left of Parliament, including its Puritan members, called the Roundheads because of their short hair. The king and the Cavaliers had their own army, and Parliament had its army, and civil war began.
Most of those in Parliament's army carried Bibles, and they were led by a devout Puritan member of Parliament named Oliver Cromwell. He was a good organizer and military commander. Parliament's army was aided by the strict discipline that was characteristic of the Calvinists - a strict discipline that helped in maintaining military formation in the heat of battle. Cromwell and his army defeated the Cavaliers at Marston Moor in northern England and the following year, 1645, at Naseby in central England. And King Charles was taken prisoner and put on trial for treason.
At the trial a lot of talk about God erupted, Charles claiming that he had a trust committed to him by God and that those trying him would be called to account by God. And those trying Charles proclaimed themselves the instruments of God's justice. The prosecutors called on God for guidance, and they spoke of God's will being done. On January 30,1649, Charles went to the executioner's block. He made a speech in which he expressed his innocence and his wish that God forgive his executioners. The executioners block was so low that Charles had to endure the indignity of lying prone rather than kneeling. As soon as he signaled with his hand, one blow severed his head, which was displayed to the huge crowd in attendance, and from the crowd came a great groan.
With the king having lost his head and no succession, England was a republic. Parliament was in charge of the government and declared England a commonwealth and "free state," without a king or House of Lords (commonwealth referring to national unity for the common good). Not yet a democracy, the commonwealth of England was functioning as a military dictatorship, while many of the English were eager to extend the revolution.
In London were those called diggers. They supported the overthrow of the monarchy but believed that common people would not benefit from it unless landlords lost their privileges and their lands to common ownership. They saw the buying and selling of land as the cause of all oppression, bondage and war. "True freedom," wrote their leader, Gerard Winstanley, "lies in free enjoyment of the earth." These were god-fearing people who disliked the association between church authorities and established power, and they claimed that existing religious authorities were instruments of class rule.
Some others were opposed to the Diggers but for democracy, and they were called Levellers by those opposed to democracy. The Leveller movement was based in London, and they too were grounded in religion. They were inclined to lift quotations from the Bible, as did their opponents - while both sides considered also their political and economic interests. As a goal during the war years (1645-46) against Charles, the Levellers advocated giving the vote to all males in elections for local offices and representation to the House of Commons. They advocated supremacy for the House of Commons, and they advocated constitutional guarantees of liberty, religious toleration and annual meetings of Parliament. The Levelers favored fairness in applications of the law, faster legal proceedings, prison reform and the closure of debtor prisons. The Levellers appealed to small farmers, small shopkeepers and artisans, but their hold on England's common people was minor. Conservative Puritans ministers accused them of adultery, incest, fornication, drunkeness, card playing and lying, and many among the common folk remained accustomed to taking their ideas from their local ministers or squire.
Members of the House of Commons - representing landowners, merchants and the middleclass - were afraid of the Levellers. Many in the army had more humble origins, and some of them joined the Leveller movement. Levellers within the army rebelled at Burford in May, 1649, while most soldiers remained loyal to their commanders. And the Leveller rebellion was crushed - the first great victory of republicans against democrats in modern times.
Soon after the Leveller rebellion was crushed, so too was Digger activism. About thirty Diggers had tried to establish themselves on wasteland at St. George's hill, in Surrey. Fear of a communist takeover spread among local ministers and small property owners. The Diggers at St. Georges Hill suffered insults and assaults, and several Diggers were arrested for trespassing on St. Georges Hill. In March 1650, the small community of Diggers was dispersed. In April, a small Digger community in Cobham was also dispersed, after a local Lord of the Manor, Parson Platt, and others destroyed Digger houses, furniture, and scattered their belongings. The Diggers were threatened with death if they returned, and several guards were posted at the property. Lacking public support, the Digger movement faded into oblivion.
In March 1649, two months after the execution of Charles, Parliament named Cromwell as Lord Lieutenant and Commander in Chief in Ireland. His duty was to establish Parliament's authority over the rebellious Catholics of Ireland - an operation opposed by the Levellers. In September, Cromwell landed at Dublin with 12,000 men, unopposed by any army. Cromwell had in mind the massacres by Catholics in 1641. He proclaimed the righteous judgment of God upon the Catholics, and at Drogheda (a seaport town thirty miles north of Dublin) he exercised God's judgment by having the population massacred. He did the same at the port of Wexford (eighty-three miles south of Dublin). Contrary to Cromwell's hopes, these massacres did not discourage resistance elsewhere among Ireland's Catholics. Being a good Puritan, Cromwell tried to stop indiscriminate plundering by his army, and, as he saw it, God gave him a victory over the Irish. The Irish saw it differently. With them, Cromwell left a legacy of hatred of British rule that was to extend into the twentieth century.
Next his army went to Scotland, where the eldest son of Charles, Charles II, then twenty, had taken residence. An army of 26,000 Scots supported the proclamation that Charles II was the new king of England, Scotland and Ireland. Into 1651, Cromwell defeated the Scottish armies. Charles II fled to France. Cromwell left behind an army in Scotland and returned to London, and Scotland was given representation in Parliament, as was Ireland.
Parliament was able to tax more than Charles would have dared try. And with the additional money, the Commonwealth was able to launch a ship building program, beginning in 1649. But English trade had been suffering, with English merchants were blaming the Spanish, French and the Dutch. The English resented Dutch economic superiority and rivalry in trade, and Dutch fishing off their shores in the North Sea. For thirty years Dutch-English relations had been deteriorating. In 1651, Parliament passed the Navigation Act, which forbade goods leaving Great Britain in the hands of Dutch merchants or on Dutch ships. In May, 1652, the Dutch and English fleets bumped into each other in the English Channel, off the coast of Dover, and, itching for a fight, the English commanders believed that the show of courtesy by the Dutch was insufficient. Shots were fired. The Dutch lost two ships, and they retreated. War between the United Netherlands and the Commonwealth of Great Britain had begun, supported by many who believed that the Dutch were a greedy people who had forsaken God's cause.
The English attacked Dutch fishing boats off the coasts of Scotland and England. Less dependent on trade by sea, the English were less vulnerable than the Dutch. The Dutch played defense, trying to protect its trade through use of convoys, which delayed trade, as did rerouting their ships around the north of Ireland and Scotland. The Dutch were vulnerable to English attacks as they passed through the English Channel, and English ships were built more for war than were Dutch ships. English ships had more firepower, and with their history of raiding the English were more skilled in the art of war, including keeping a naval military line. Dutch naval officers were more influenced by the traditions of merchant shipping, with less orientation in the rigorous discipline that served warfare.
Despite England's successes in warfare, members of Parliament continued to squabble, as members of parliaments are wont to do, and toward the end of 1653 a group of army officers declared Cromwell Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. A constitution was written. Cromwell was from the landed elite rather than a merchant family, and he was not so enthusiastic for the war as were some others. The war was hurting England's trade as well as Dutch trade. Maintaining a naval blockade of the Netherlands was expensive, and English seamen, sitting on ships at anchor off the coast of the United Netherlands, were growing restless and irritated.
Some in England were glorying in their country's success against the Dutch, and they were displeased by Cromwell move to end the war, believing that doing so was premature. Cromwell was opposed to further war against fellow Protestants while he saw danger looming from Catholic France. England, the land that had killed its king, was looked upon with disdain by much of Europe, and in the international arena England could use all the friends it could get, including the Dutch. The war was hurting the Dutch, their economy having been built on economic efficiency and peace, and in 1654 Cromwell and the Dutch signed an agreement ending the war.
During the republic, Puritans held the position of respectable pillar of local society. Puritans supporting Cromwell's dictatorship had hoped for a remaking of common folk. They were opposed to idleness and disorderly conduct and favored instead the conduct of people of "credit and reputation." They favored an individuals right to interpret God's word without the guidance of a priest. And although they frowned upon people whose interpretation was different from theirs, they did believe in a degree of tolerance among their fellow Protestants.
Various Protestant sects had emerged - Baptists, Ranters, Quakers and others, all insisting that they be allowed their own course toward salvation. The name Baptist was a shortened version of Anabaptist, Anabaptist ideas having spread from the Dutch, the first Baptist church appearing in England in the year 612. Another sect, which made its appearance during the republic, was called the Fifth Monarchy Men. They believed that a new rule was coming that would be the successor to the Roman Empire, a rule in which Jesus Christ would reign on earth, with his saints, for one thousand years.
Like the early Christians, in being different they aroused suspicion and hostility. Puritans detested the Quakers for their pacifism and their belief in equality, seeing equality as a threat to civil disorder. The Quakers drew hostility also by interrupting other people's church services. Quakers, in turn, had dirt clods, cow dung and sticks thrown at them during their services. In 1659 a rumor spread that Quakers were running naked through the streets, and concern erupted over morality and the safety of property.
Despite the prevalence of religious faith, England, especially London, remained a rough and tumble town. The world of things in England seemed a domain of sin in which each person had to seek a break from the common corruption and put himself or herself right with God. Drinking, gambling and fighting were common. Despite rule by the Puritans, crime in England was on the rise, including crimes that were capital offenses - of which there were over two hundred, including horse or sheep stealing or shoplifting more than five shillings worth of goods. But the authorities saw themselves as humane. Rather than hang many of those found guilty of capital offenses, they sent them to their colonies in the Americas.
A belief in witchcraft was still prevalent, and was being exported to the Americas. This was accompanied by a quote from Exodus 22:18, "Thou shall not suffer a witch to live." People were on the lookout for signs of lust, old women who were quick to curse, people who were spiteful and ill-natured, and people with brown lumps on their body, where Satan had sucked. Women were more frequently the targets of witch hunts and were often thrown into dungeons and tortured, willing to confess to anything to stop their torment. Women were hanging on to a tradition of herbal remedies more effective in healing than those thought of as learned physicians, with their bleeding, purging, fumigations, and toxic chemicals such as mercury. The explanation for the women being able to heal and the learned physicians not was often witchcraft.
Against the will of merchants lawyers and others, Cromwell allowed Jews to live and worship in England, ending their 365-year banishment, the Jews building their first synagogue in London in 1657. But Cromwell prohibited Catholics practicing their faith. He saw his primary role as a stay against wickedness and saw Catholicism in England as seditious. England was at war with Catholic Spain, and Catholic France, and he saw England at war with "popery," royalists from abroad and closet royalists at home.
Cromwell opened and closed Parliament, appointed officials, received ambassadors and distributed honors while retaining an air of modesty amid an elaborate court. He wanted his image to remain off coins. His modesty was in part at least the product of his Puritanism, which also led him to believe that he was doing the Lord's work. Success he took as God's favor. Failure he took as a sign of God's disfavor. Defeats suffered by his forces in the Caribbean in 1655, at the hands of the Spanish, he saw as a consequence of "... extreme avarice, pride and confidence, disorders and debauchedness, profaneness and wickedness, commonly practiced" among his forces. And for his soldiers in the Caribbean he urged stricter discipline to remove "all manner of vice" and to create conditions wherein "virtue and godliness" could flourish.
Cromwell's health weakened, and in 1658 "the Lord called him away," and following his death came political turmoil. Some had had their fill of Puritanism and were relieved that Cromwell had died. Some had hated Cromwell's regime for the execution of Charles I and some hated it for a taxation that had been greater than under Charles I. Levellers were still around, and they thought that maybe their ideas would fare better under a constitutional monarchy - a monarch perhaps looking more to the benefit of common people rather than the interest of the wealthy merchants and landowners.
Discontent rose among some as a result of a decline in economic activity caused by war with Spain. Fear of plunder by soldiers arose among civilians as soldiers went unpaid. Most of the cost of the army had been paid by monthly assessments - taxes on property - and people did not have the money to pay these taxes. Rather than pay their taxes some rioted. Parliament ruled, but ineffectively. In December 1659 shops in London had shut down and bloodshed was feared. Troops fired on a great crowd of apprentices presenting for reform, leaving six or seven dead. Many had begun to long for the good old days of monarchical rule, including church leaders among the Presbyterians and Anglicans. They had tolerated Cromwell, seeing him as a bulwark against the political left, and with Cromwell gone they were again afraid of mobs and common folk.
Parliament itself was affected by the swing in opinion. On May 1, 1660, both houses of Parliament voted to restore the monarchy to the eldest son of Charles I, who was in exile in France. Charles arrived at Dover on May 25. Bonfires were lit and bells rung in great celebration. A few notorious republicans were burned in effigy. In October a prominent republican, Thomas Harrison, was hanged, drawn and quartered, and his heart and head displayed to cheering onlookers. In January, the body of Cromwell and two others were exhumed and their bodies hanged in symbolic executions. The people of England were relieved and happy.
Charles II was intelligent and concerned with his duties, but he also believed in fun. He became known as the merry monarch. He was relaxed and good natured. He felt no need to posture, but he was well mannered and courteous. Charles promised to abide by the laws of Parliament. The king was to have his powers and the Parliament its powers. The House of Lords had been re-established, giving Parliament two houses again, and it would be the Parliament that would govern economic policy and try to resolve differences between rival economic groups. Parliament was to exercise power by granting money to the king only for those specific purposes that it approved. The king would be chief executive of his government, but restrained from making laws by proclamation. He would be the head of state, without the power to absorb local governments. And Parliament declared its recognition that the king of England ruled by Divine Right.
Charles created a council of five men, known as the CABAL (the first letter in each man's surname) who were to be his ministers and a liaison with Parliament. They were members of Parliament and the beginning of what would eventually become the cabinet of parliamentary government - that portion of the government that would perform government functions in the place of the monarch.
Charles was also head of the Church of England, which was falling away from the religious zeal of the Puritans, and this suited him temperamentally. Charles was interested in science. He had his own laboratory, encouraged applied science and gave his support to the founding of the Royal Society for Improving Natural Knowledge - in addition to patronizing the theater.
Charles was the head of an army of no significant size. Public opinion did not allow him an army large enough to defend his interests. The English did not want another civil war, and without an army with which to force his will upon the English people, Charles had to be careful to avoid angering people to the extent that they would rise en masse against him.
Charles was sympathetic toward Catholicism, traditionally closer to the Divine Right of kings than was Protestantism. And Charles was more liberal on the issue of religion that most other Englishmen. He wished for liberty of worship, and he was genuinely tolerant. In 1662 he issued a declaration granting toleration to Catholics and those Protestants known as Dissenters. But Parliament refused to ratify Charles' declaration, leaving Catholics and "Dissenters" less than equal politically, including prohibition from occupying any political office.
Charles was free to marry whomever he wished, and he married a Portuguese princess, Catherine of Gragnza, and Tangier and Bombay were transferred to British rule as a part of Catherine's dowry. She was Roman Catholic, and so too was France's Duke of Orleans, who married Charles's sister, Henrietta Anne, which was accompanied by the transfer of Dunkirk to French rule. This was standard doings for European royalty and impacted Charles' foreign policy.
England remained at peace with Catholic Spain, but against the Protestant Dutch another war erupted. This was inspired largely by people who recalled the glory days of the First Dutch War and wanted to take trade away from the Dutch. In 1664, English in the Americas take New Amsterdam (soon to be known as New York). A propaganda campaign in England included descriptions of the Dutch as fat and greedy, as hog-like in their love of getting down in the dirt, and as drinking too much. A group of merchants based in London presented a petition to the House of Commons, protesting that the Dutch were obstructing foreign trade, inciting tribal communities overseas against them, destroying their warehouses and proclaiming themselves masters of the Southern Seas. The House of Commons voted Charles 2.5 million pounds for war, believing that victory against the Dutch would be easy, and Charles went along with a war against the Protestant Dutch.
War was declared in February 1665, and that same year England was weakened by plague. The following year London burned to the ground. London was a city of wood, with straw on the floors of homes and with second or third stories hanging over narrow streets, and fire used for cooking and heat. At one in the morning on September 2, 1666, fire broke out in a bakery, and wind spread the fire to contiguous buildings and to the wharves on the river front. The usual procedure was to demolish homes in front of the fire to keep the fire from spreading, but this was not done at daylight on the first day of the fire. A few houses were demolished, but mostly people were fleeing rather than fighting the fire. The fire lasted days and left the city in ruin. Huts sprang up on destroyed property. New brick and mortar homes went up in London's suburbs and the more affluent moved there, while poorer people were moved into the cheaper eastern and southern neighborhoods. Seeing a possible connection between the fire and God's displeasure, authorities began an official investigation into atheism in London, and the English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, burned some of his writings to hide evidence that could be used against him.
As usual, the war against the Dutch did not go as well as had been expected. The Dutch had learned lessons from their previous war with England. Their ships were now heavier and stronger, better manned and better armed, and the Dutch inflicted much damage on England's fleet.
France was also a concern. France was growing as a power and the greatest power in Europe. King Louis XIV of France was married to the daughter of king Philip IV of Spain, and after Philip's death in 1665, Louis laid claim to the "Spanish Netherlands." France was a threat to the Dutch, and Englishmen who feared France, and Catholicism, feared also that defeat of their fellow Protestants, the Dutch, would give too much power to France. Among the English a grudging respect for the Dutch as combatants had risen, and some saw advantage in having the Dutch rather than the French as friends. Charles remained hostile to the Dutch, but the war was costing too much money and he went along with the negotiated end to the war, which came in 1667 - the Treaty of Breda. Then the English joined Swedes and the Dutch against Louis' move into the Netherlands, and Louis ended his move in 1668, content with having added Flanders to his domains.
The honeymoon between the monarchy and parliament had ended, each side with its own interpretation of what powers had been given it by the Constitution. Conflict existed too between landowners, who tended to belong to the Church of England, and the city merchants and financiers. Dissenters, especially Quakers and Baptists, were unhappy over pressure from the Anglicans (the Church of England) to conform to their ways. Members of Parliament continued to believe that a nation should be united by one religion, and Parliament was enacting laws strengthening the position of the Church of England, laws that held that those who refused to receive the sacrament of the Church of England could not vote, hold public office, preach, teach, attend a university or assemble for meetings. Dissenting Protestants were also bothered by the appearance of Catholicism among the royals:the mother of Charles II and his wife, brother James and mistresses were Catholics. England's Protestants saw frivolity and debauchery in the court of Charles II. An outburst against immorality occurred in March 1668 with the Bawdy House Riots, when crowds of young men, many of them sailors recently demobilized from the war against the Dutch, demolished houses of prostitution in London. Leaders of the riots were indicted for treason, and hostility toward Charles among the Londoners reached a new high. Again in London, republican pamphlets began to circulate.
In 1670, Charles II began receiving money from Louis XIV in secret, in exchange for Charles making an effort to ease laws against Catholics, to gradually return Britain to Catholicism and to support the French against the Dutch - money, it was agreed, that Charles would receive annually. The French were hostile toward competitive Dutch trade, and Louis XIV wished to expand farther in the Netherlands. Also, some conservative regimes of Europe, including that of Louis XIV, believed that ideas spreading from Holland were "poisonous" - a danger to order and to them. In 1672, Charles joined the French in another war against the Dutch - the Dutch with one-half the population of England and one-sixth the population of France. That same year, Charles declared laws against Dissenters and Roman Catholics suspended - a move of dubious legality in that the Constitution provided the king with such power only during an emergency.
The bargain between Charles and Louis XIV included Charles providing naval operations against the Dutch, and Charles had plans to invade the Dutch republic. Parliament, however, was unenthusiastic about the war and about fighting on the same side as the great defender of Catholicism - Louis XIV. The Scots, who had been trading with the Dutch, preferred peace with their fellow Protestants. The Dutch flooded their country in front of the advancing French, preventing a French victory, and the Dutch organized another coalition of European nations against France.
In 1673, Parliament voted Charles the money he needed to pursue war against the Dutch, but on condition that he reinstate the laws against Dissenters and Catholics, laws that excluded dissenters and Catholics. By 1675, the economic burdens of the war and rising opposition to the war by Protestants and Parliament resulted in Charles agreeing to a negotiated settlement with the Dutch. The invasion that Charles had planned had never materialized.
Hostility toward Catholicism continued and in 1678 rose to hysteria. Two adventurers announced what they had uncovered a plot to murder Protestants, accompanied by a Catholic army entering England from across the English Channel, burning London again, and the army placing Charles' Catholic brother, James, the Duke of York, on the throne. The magistrate before whom information on the plot had been laid died, and many assumed that his death was a part of the Papist plot - a move to suppress evidence of the plot. Also, news spread that James' secretary had been corresponding with Catholic leaders in France on political matters. Fear and certainty about the conspiracy spread. Some Catholics were arrested on suspicion of being participants in the plot. False witnesses appeared, and thirty-five Catholics were executed. Parliament passed a unanimous resolution declaring that the "damnable and hellish" plot existed, for the purpose of murdering the king, subverting the government and destroying Protestantism. To protect the nation from Catholicism, Parliament offered the Exclusion Act. Catholics were to be excluded as heirs to the crown.
Charles believed that it had been his right to chose whomever he wanted as his heir. He counted the Exclusion Act with a Limitations Bill, which merely put restrictions on the powers of any Catholic king. Public unrest created fear of another civil war among conservatives in Parliament, and Parliament divided into separate political organizations:Tories and Whigs. The Tories were largely members of the Church of England. They believed that the Exclusion Act was a defiance of monarchical power and the making of another civil war. "Forty-one" (the revolution of 1641) was here again, they claimed. They favored law and order above all else. The Tories allied themselves with Charles, who was still the head of the Church of England, and they believed that the Church of England was the teacher of the one true religion and an effective shield against both Catholic absolutism and Dissenter rebellion. By now Charles had been trying to force the Presbyterians of Scotland to accept bishops in conformity with the Church of England. Scots resisted and blood was shed.
The Whigs favored parliamentary power over the power of kings, and they were willing to offer Dissenters more participation in government than were the Tories. Tory and Whig were names originating in insults. Tory was an Irish word for a Papist outlaw. Whig was a name for Scottish Presbyterians and cattle and horse thieves. The Tories saw the Whigs as dangerous plotters. Among the Whigs arose a description of a Tory as a monster with an English face, a French heart, an Irish conscience and a creature with a prodigious mouth and no brains.
The Tory power base was more rural, the Whig power base more urban. The Whigs wanted the Exclusion Act at the expense of monarchical power. The Whigs believed that Catholicism and arbitrary power were inseparable. Charles and the Tories prevailed against the Whigs.
It was an organizer of the Whigs, Lord Anthony Shaftesbury, who was largely responsible for passage of the Act of Habeas Corpus, enacted in 1679 following public pressure on parliament. The Habeas Corpus - assented to by King Charles - strengthened existing law protecting people from abuse from officials. It forbade imprisonment without trial and required government to explain why a prisoner was being held. The act made officials responsible for the welfare of prisoners in their care. It provided for a trial without undue delay, and it held that no one could be tried twice for the same crime.
King Charles and the Tories rigged selection of representatives from cities and boroughs (towns), and Whig representation to Parliament dwindled. Charles stopped calling for the opening of Parliament, and the Exclusion Act failed to become law. In February, Charles became ill. His Catholic brother, James, summoned a priest who received Charles into the Catholic Church. Then Charles died, and James became King James II of England. To the relief of many who had feared a Protestant uprising, calm prevailed - until June. The Protestant son of one of Charles" mistresses, the thirty-six year-old Duke of Monmouth (James Scott Monmouth) had been in exile in the United Netherlands. Urged on by opponents of James, he landed on June 11 at Dorset with a force of 82 men. Some farmers and laborers rose up in support of Monmouth - to be known as the pitchfork rebellion. On July 6, Monmouth and his poorly trained force fought a decisive battle with regular troops on the Plain of Sedgemoor - said to be the last land battle in England. Monmouth was defeated. He fled and was captured within a few days. On July 15, without a trial, he was sent to the gallows where, it is said, he faced death with dignity.
James was forced to open Parliament, because funds that Parliament had granted Charles II had ended automatically with Charles' death. James dreaded it, but the opening of Parliament went well for him, Parliament granting him generous revenue to run his government. James emerged believing that he was home free to exercise the power that he thought the Constitution had granted him. He moved to remove restrictions that prevented Catholics from holding public office and serving as officers in the military. In a second Parliament, opened in November, 1685, he requested funds for a standing army in which would be Catholic officers. His Tory allies abandoned him, King James having been politically naive and having lost sight of the importance of considering political allies - the Tories. In 1686 James was appointing Catholics to office, and those Protestants who objected he dismissed from office. Seven Anglican bishops were tried for libel for refusing James' order to read his declaration removing restrictions on Catholics read from their pulpit. Oxford University was converted from an Anglican to a Catholic institution. The alliance that had existed between Charles and the Tories was over. People again saw danger in Catholicism, although only two percent of the English were Catholic.
Louis XIV helped provoke more anti-Catholicism in England, by driving from France those Protestants called Huguenots. Louis, disliking division, had decided that France should be united religiously as well as politically. It was, after all, tradition, although it was a revocation of his grandfather's Edict of Nantes, which had guaranteed the Huguenots freedom of worship. Economically it was a bad move, unforeseen by those supporting it. Tens of thousands of Protestants moved from France, to Holland, England and Prussia, taking their skills and business acumen with them.
James II, meanwhile, had only two daughters as possible heirs: Mary and Anne. They were Protestant, and some expected that James, aged 51, would eventually be succeeded by a Protestant heir, but when a son was born to his wife this hope was dashed. If nothing were done, the crown would become permanently Catholic. Parliament looked for help from Mary, who was in the United Netherlands.
Mary was married to William III, a product of more intermarriage among Europe's royal families. William was a member of a royal family originating from Orange (just north of Avignon, in France), which had become royalty in the Netherlands. He was also the son of the daughter of Charles I and therefore a nephew of Charles II and James II and a cousin to his wife Mary. William was a Protestant like Mary, and he had been recognized by the Dutch bourgeois oligarchy as head of state (stadtholder) for life. William had been looking forward to his wife inheriting the throne in England, and the extension of his power there and to a greater unity between England and the United Netherlands. Now with a son having been born to James, William accepted Parliament's invitation to him and to Mary to rule in place of James, to protect Protestantism in England and to protect political liberty. On November 5, 1688, William landed in England at the head of a large army. Protestants rose in support of William and Parliament, seeing William as a champion of Protestantism against Catholicism. In Yorkshire, the Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill and most of England's army switched their loyalty to William. James lacked sufficient forces with which to resist. He feared for his and his family's safety, and with his wife and son he went into exile in France, where Louis XIV provided them with a pension. These events were called the Glorious Revolution because they were relatively bloodless, in contrast to the civil wars in the mid-1600s.
In February, 1689, Parliament, with Tories and Whigs participating, created the Declaration of Rights, and in December this was amended and became the Bill of Rights, a bill that embodied terms of Parliament's offer to William and Mary to rule as joint sovereigns and a list of grievances against James II - laws that were agreed to by William and Mary - laws believed to have been understood in 1660 when Charles II ascended the throne. In accordance with the new laws,
In the euphoria of a bloodless revolution and unity against Catholicism, also passed was the Toleration Act, which recognized that people could not be compelled to become members of the Church of England.
People were no longer to be punished if they were not members of the Church of England, and people were not to be compelled to become members of the Church of England. The law guaranteeing freedom of worship in Britain was uncommon in Europe. But Dissenters were still required to pay tithes to the Church of England, and Catholics and Dissenters remained barred from public office and the universities.
The royal family also lived with restrictions: they were not allowed to marry Catholics. And another act declared that no Catholic could become king or queen. In England the religion of the ruled now determined the religion of the ruler, a reversal of the old tradition, recently alive on the continent among Protestant and Catholic princes, that the religion of the ruler determined the religion of his subjects.
In England it was now recognized that the king was subordinate to Parliament. England had a constitutional monarchy. Rather than a monarchy ruling by divine right, rule was seen as a social contract. God was removed from the political equation. Kingship was seen as empowered by man-made laws rather than godly sanctions.
One English philosopher influenced by events was Thomas Hobbes. He had studied the classics at Oxford from 1604 at the age of fourteen. In the first half of the 1600s, England's universities were still immersed in the writings of Aristotle, and Hobbes disliked the metaphysical muddles. He became a nominalist and the first significant British empiricist, and he was to be called the father of analytical philosophy. He was interested in logic and language and created a distinction between proper nouns and universal nouns.
Hobbes went abroad at the age thirty, and in Paris, in 1651, he was a tutor in mathematics to the future King of England, Charles II. Also in 1651, Hobbes' book Leviathan appeared, otherwise entitled Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil. The Church did not care for the book, and Hobbes returned to Protestant England and settled in London. Hobbes would always be accused of failing to make sufficient room in his theories for the spirit, soul and the deity. He withdrew from controversies, while across Europe he was becoming the man whom students were expected to refute.
Hobbes hated civil strife but saw conflict as inherent in society. He believed that it was natural for people to advance their interests against the interests of others, and he held that to escape endless war people should join in delegating their own powers to a central authority. Taking a cue in part from Galileo's description of inertia, Hobbes took up the cause of constraint. He warned that democracy meant anarchy because it lacked constraints. He believed that humanity had once lived in a "state of nature" and that men joined together and adopted government for the sake of security of life and private property. He believed that government was a matter of social contract rather than authority designated by God or mandate from Heaven. He held that if established political authority failed to protect society from anarchy then men (ignoring women) had the right to declare their agreement with that authority null and void. He believed that churches, including the Church of England, should be governed by state laws rather than be above state laws.
Following Hobbes, an English philosopher, John Locke, advanced a political philosophy contrary to England's conservatism. Locke was the son of a Puritan who had fought in the army on the side of Cromwell and Parliament. He studied at Oxford from 1652 at the age of 20, lecturing there from 1661 to 1567. He shared Hobbes' dislike for scholasticism, and, unlike Plato, he held that words were mere convention agreed to for the sake of communication. He saw people as influenced by their environment, as born with minds analogous to a clean sheet of paper upon which their experiences were written. These experiences, according to Locke, were mostly external realities passing through the senses, with some of these experiences the product of reflection - the human mind aware of and acting upon itself. Locke believed in God, but he did not include God as a fundamental force within the human psyche, or God as having residence in the human heart. It was humanity's will and way that interested Locke, Locke becoming one of the founders of modern psychology.
In 1675, Locke went to France, and there he met men of science and letters and discussed the world and philosophy. In 1683 he fled the turmoil and recriminations that were a part of the final years of the reign of Charles II. He went into hiding in the United Netherlands, joining other exiles - Germans, Scots, Scandinavians, Jews, Armenians, Turks and Englishmen - many of them seeking freedom from persecution.
Locke returned to England in February 1689, four months after William of Orange but on the same ship as England's returning queen:Mary. Locke by now had some fame. And he was now about to add to that fame with the publishing of two treatises on government, a work that was created before the Glorious Revolution, in response to the crisis around 1679-80 surrounding the Exclusion Act and in defense of Whig political theory. In this work, Locke formulated the contractual theory and rebutted arguments for rule by divine right of kings. Like Hobbes he believed that politics was a social contract, but he went further than Hobbes and wrote in favor of a balance of powers. He claimed that an independent judiciary should be a part of government, making decisions based on the nation's constitution. He believed that parliament's duty was to legislate, and the king's duty was to act as chief executive.
Locke also favored toleration. The bigotry that had contributed to Europe's recent religious wars and atrocities annoyed him. For a modern society to function well, he believed, it had to be unified not by a single religion but by tolerance. While believing in tolerance he also held that churches should be voluntary societies rather than appendages of higher authority associated with the state, as was the Anglican Church. This was a part of his opposition to authoritarianism. His tolerance existed despite his normal level of prejudices - the differences of opinion which tolerance was about. He favored dispassionate judgment and saw danger in fanaticism, including Bible thumping preachers who orated not to stimulate reason but to frighten.
Liberals such as Locke feared the emotionalism of the rude multitude. Liberals tended to be people who read intellectual books. They tended to believe in education and in people lifting themselves above their circumstances as many members of the bourgeoisie had done. And as intellectuals they valued freedom to disseminate ideas and rejected church authority in matters of philosophy and science.
Among other progressives in England was William Harvey, who lived to 1657 and demonstrated the function of the heart and the circulation of blood. There was also Robert Boyle, another natural philosopher. Boyle, with careful observation and experimentation, elevated chemistry above the alchemy popular in his time. And another progressive was Isaac Newton, who revolutionized how the universe was viewed.
Newton entered Cambridge in 1661 and in his undergraduate years had to work his way through the writings of Aristotle. Like some other progressives he was influenced by the development of mechanistic devices in Europe. As a child he was interested in mechanisms, and halfway through his undergraduate years he adopted a mechanistic view of the workings of nature, joining Hobbes, Boyle and the French philosopher René Descartes (who lived to 1650) against the rival notion of divine magic. Newton adopted what was known as the corpuscular theory of matter, a belief that matter was made up of tiny particles - an atomic theory similar to that of Democritus of ancient Greece.
Newton was also a mathematician, and he applied mathematics to his study of light, working on this from around 1666. He countered Descartes' notion of the mechanics of light as a succession of pressures or bumps - like the bumps that a blind man receives as sensations at his hand as he taps his stick while walking. Newton saw light as a continuous ray that moved with speed, and his expressions of this view were met with disbelief.
Newton's explanation why things corpuscular do not fly away in all directions met with greater success. Newton pondered the question why the moon does not fly out of orbit. He found a mathematical formula that kept in balance two forces: a gravitational pull of the moon toward the earth and inertia, which would have the moon moving in a straight line. Newton concluded that the force of gravity between two bodies was relative to the differences in mass of those bodies reduced by the square of the distance between those two bodies.
Newton would be known as having discovered gravity - simplified as much is in the popular mind into Newton being stuck on the head with an apple. And Newton invented a new theory about the universe, a single explanation about inertia, change proportional to the amount of force applied to an object, and forces in balance, forces meeting equal an equal and opposite force. The secrets of the universe appeared to have been unlocked. A contemporary poet, Alexander Pope, wrote of "nature's laws hid by night, God said Let Newton be! and All was light!"
Newton had another interest: human history, which he had been working on for decades - much more complex and significant, he thought, than physics. The Bible was his source of human history and biblical chronology the center of his study. Like some other Protestants, he was searching for a pure Christianity, and his effort was welcomed by other biblical scholars, who hoped that he create a breakthrough with his Bible study as he had with the mechanics of the universe. Newton pondered Hebrew chronology from Adam to Noah and beyond, adding up all the begetting. He studied biblical prophesies, Greek and Roman historians and what little was known of the Assyrians and Egyptians. He held to the traditional view that the primary actors appearing on the earthly stage were the ancient Hebrews, and he held to the standard Protestant view that every sentence in the Bible was literally true. He found writing to have been invented by the Ishmaelites around the time of Moses. He believed that the Creation had taken place somewhere around 4,000 years before Christ, and he hoped to be able to predict the future and the date of the Second Coming.
Some looked at Newton's theory of a mechanistic universe and accused him of trying to supplant the workings of God. Newton was trying no such thing . But some took from Newton what was to be the point of view of the Deists. They saw God as prime mover and not intervening in events, similar to winding up a clock and letting the universe and human history tick away.
Many Christians continued with tradition Christianity. Empirically it was believed, Newton had established laws as to how the physical world worked, but to them these were not really universal laws. Sometimes things happened, they believed, that were both empirical and outside Newton's laws nature - miracles.
Recommended Books
Revolution, Reaction and the Triumph of Conservatism: English history 1558-1700, by M A R Graves and, R H Silcock, 1984
Charles II: Royal Politician, J R Jones, 1987
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