The English Civil War

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The English Civil War

• Amanda Flather
• CS101
• Lecture 5

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Lecture Outline

• Introduction
• Divine Right Theory
• The English Civil War Context and Causes
• Constitutionalism and Contract
• The Glorious Revolution
• Conclusion

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The Regicide The Execution of Charles 1 (1649)
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Introduction

• Sixteenth century western Europe expressed
  unfaltering loyalty to a patriarchal Christian
  God and to a view of the world as his creation.
• Hierarchy regarded as part of Gods divinely
  appointed plan and guarantor of stability.
• Reflected in belief in a Great Chain of Being.
  God had arranged the universe in a certain order,
  and so the structure of society should reflect
  this in its own composition

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Great Chain of Being Rhetorica Christiana (1579)
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Homily on Obedience (1559)

• In all things is to bee lauded and praised the
  goodly order of GOD, without the which no house,
  no Citie, no Commonwealth can continue and
  endure, or last.For where there is no right
  order, there reigneth all abuse, carnall liberty,
  enormitie, sinne, and Babylonicall confusion.

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• Rebellion was blasphemy as well as treason
• How and why was it that
• Charles 1 was executed in 1649 and
• James 11 was deposed in 1688?

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Charles 1 Anthony Van Dyck
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James 11
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Divine Right Theory

• Medieval political theorists had seen kings as
  deriving their authority from God, but as obliged
  to rule in accordance with law and in
  consultation with the nobility.
• Most people accepted that a prince was divinely
  ordained, and that to deviate from hierarchy was
  blasphemy but many theorists also accepted that
  if a prince ruled tyrannically he could be
  removed by his subjects.  

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The Original Contract

• Natural Law led the people to establish the state
  and government.
• Direct democracy impracticable and so the people
  delegate one (monarch) or a few (aristocrats) to
  rule. However, the people placed limitations on
  their rulers' power. The conditions on which
  people granted power to their rulers was termed
  the "original contract.
• The theory of the original contract could be used
  to justify resistance to tyrants. The people had
  a right to judge if a monarch was acting
  tyrannically and in breach of contract.

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Absolutism and Divine Right Theory

• More authoritarian views of government developed
  during 16th century when France was torn apart
  by the Religious Wars between Catholics and
  Protestants.
• Some French writers began to argue that only a
  strong central government could prevent anarchy,
  and that resistance to the monarch was never
  legitimate. The most important French absolutist
  theorist was Jean Bodin (1530-1596), who in
  1576 published Six Books of the Commonwealth.
• Bodin argued that the sovereign could not be
  limited by human laws - since whatever
  institution had the right to judge if the law
  were being infringed would itself be the real
  sovereign.
•  

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Absolutist Theory

• There must be one - and only one - sovereign in
  every state (although it can be a body consisting
  of more than one person).
• The sovereign holds all legitimate power and
  should never be actively resisted.
• If the sovereign commands a contravention of
  God's law, disobey, but accept the punishment (
  "passive obedience").

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Absolutism and Divine Right

• Divine right theory was a branch of absolutism
• Most divine right theorists thought that monarchy
  was the best form of government and that monarchs
  should never be resisted by the people.
• Divine right theorists insisted that the ruler's
  authority was from God alone (not from the
  community). They quoted Scripture in their
  support
• Proverbs 8.15-16 By me kings reign, and princes
  decree justice. By me princes rule, and nobles,
  even all the judges of the earth.

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Divine Right and Patriarchalism

• Patriarchalism defended divine right theory. It
  rested on the widely-held belief that husbands
  had authority over their wives and fathers over
  their children. This power was held both to be
  natural (since every society in the world
  accepted it) and divine (since God endorsed it in
  the Bible).
• Some theorists argued that sovereigns as
  naturally held power over their states as fathers
  did over their families.
• A monarch was no more accountable to his subjects
  than a father was to his children. 

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Robert Filmer (1588-1653) Patriarcha (1631 pub.
1680)
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James 1 Paul van Somer (15761621)
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James 1 Patriarchy and Divine Right

• Kings are not onely GODS Lieutenants upon
  earth, and sit upon GODS throne, but even by GOD
  himselfe they are called Gods.
• Kings are also compared to Fathers of families
  for a King is trewly Parens patriæ, the politique
  father of his people. (James 1 speech to
  Parliament 1610)
• 15971598The Trew Law of Free Monarchies
• Basilikon Doron

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Charles 1 Van Dyck
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Charles and Divine Right

• Charles was like his father in that he believed
  in authoritarian and absolutist government
• Unlike James 1 he was distant wanted to use
  divine authority but didnt like people E.g.
  Royal Gift of Healing Charles 11 touchedc.
  90,000

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• Many of his subjects became convinced essentially
  that Charles was like Satan
• Gods greatest lieutenant became a traitor who
  failed to protect true religion or ancient law
• What de-stabilized the state and caused the
  English Civil War?

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Did Charles 1 cause the English civil War?

• Long term structural weaknesses
• crown financially weak- no standing army- king
  dependent on co-operation of the landed classes.
• Religious division England was a moderate
  Protestant state, anti-popish, but contained
  within it significant minority of radical
  Protestants and Roman Catholics
• Problem of Multiple Kingdoms- Charles king of
  England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, each with
  a very different political and religious
  character.
• Short term causes
• Charles personal rule (1629-40) use of
  prerogative to collect taxes deemed unlawful by
  many, and use of royal courts to remove political
  opponents
• Religion-Charles supported high-church
  Laudianism (or Arminianism), widely seen as
  a backdoor to popery.
• Charles provoked a crisis in 1637 by imposing his
  religious policies on the Calvinist Scots

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The Political Debate

• Collapse of authority
• Collapse of censorship
• Extraordinary debate
• The end of patriarchy? Challenge to belief that
  husbands had natural right to control wives
• The end of monarchy?

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Parliamentary Resistance and the Original
Contract

• Parliament went to war with King Charles I in
  defense of the liberties of the English people,
  and of the established Protestant religion.
• Parliamentarians believed that the king's
  policies threatened both religion and liberty.
• Many of them argued against the theory of divine
  right of kings, and claimed that monarchs got
  their powers not from God alone, but from the
  people.
• Parliament drew on the idea that the first king
  had been granted authority by the people in an
  original contract which defined and limited his
  power. A king who infringed the contract, they
  said, could be resisted by his subjects.

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Radicalism and The Revolution

• Most parliamentarians were not democrats but
  elitists who argued that the people - who had
  originally been sovereign, and who had granted
  authority to the king - were not the mass of the
  population, but the wealthy, landowning members
  of society.
• Different ideas began to spread in the
  parliamentarian army, especially from 1645.
• The Levellers proposed a new constitution called
  the Agreement of the People, with frequent
  Parliaments elected by all adult males.
• These ideas were popular in London and in the
  army. Many soldiers came to believe that they,
  and other ordinary people, should be given a
  share in political power. They had risked their
  lives fighting against the king and wanted some
  tangible rewards.

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The True Levellers

• Another group led by Gerard Winstanley, who
  called themselves the "True Levellers" and who
  became known as Diggers, advocated the abolition
  of property.
• These religiously-inspired radicals wanted a
  system of communal farming, and believed that
  government would be unnecessary as rural harmony
  would blossom in the absence of property rights.
  

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The True Levellers

• "But when once the Earth becomes a common
  treasury again, as it must, for all the
  prophesies of Scriptures and reason are circled
  here in this community, and mankind must have the
  law of righteousness once more writ in his heart,
  and all must be made of one heart, and one mind.
  Then this enmity in all lands will cease, for
  none shall dare to seek a dominion over others,
  neither shall any dare to kill another, nor
  desire more of the Earth then another " From
  The True Levellers Standard Advanced (1649).

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Royalism, Absolutism and Thomas Hobbes
(1588-1679)

• Royalists supported the King and principle of
  hierarchy against what they believed to be the
  threat of anarchy.
• Hobbes, a Royalist and defender of the King
  published two influential works of political
  thought De cive (1642, 1647) and Leviathan (1651)

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Royalism, Absolutism and Hobbes

• The most basic axiom of Hobbes' system of
  political thought was that everyone naturally
  aims at self-preservation. He argued that in "a
  state of nature" (i.e. where there was no
  government), life would be completely insecure.
  Without any protection against aggression, life
  would be miserable and dangerous. 
• "No arts no letters no society and which is
  worst of all, continual fear, and danger of
  violent death and the life of man, solitary,
  poor, nasty, brutish, and short"(Hobbes,
  Leviathan, 1.18).
• Under such conditions, people would be willing
  to surrender their own powers to an absolute
  government that would protect them from everyone
  else. Hobbes argued that the sovereign's power
  was absolute - (s)he made the law, and no other
  law could limit sovereign power. The only right
  Hobbes left to subjects was the right to defend
  themselves against the sovereign's direct
  attack. 

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• Hobbes put forward his arguments in a specific
  historical context, to defeat the revolutionary
  legions contending in the 1640s against the
  British monarchy. The Civil War was a very
  violent war, in which perhaps 180,000 people
  died. Hobbes hoped that the fear of death would
  serve as a weapon against that group of men who
  plunged England into civil war, the political
  corollary of the state of nature.

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• Hobbes was the great counter-revolutionary,
  warning that the revolutionary pressures for
  freedom and liberty were potentially so dangerous
  that they had to be countered at all times by
  fierce, state directed repression.
• Only through the agency of the state could men be
  kept safe and could the fear of death, universal
  to all men, be kept at bay.
• Can you see links between these arguments and
  those made by Western governments today?

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The Civil War

• Parliament won because of its 1) alliance with
  Scots- creates two fronts against the royalists
  2) support of London, which provides sound
  financial base 3) creation of New Model Army,
  with committed leaders (Fairfax, Cromwell) and
  disciplined soldiery.
• Post-War all sides want a compromise settlement
  retaining the monarchy. Charles tries to play off
  his enemies (Scots, English Parliamentary groups-
  Presbyterians and Independents- and the Army)
  against each other, and stirs up 2nd civil war.
• King soon defeated, tried and executed 1649.

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The Stuarts Restored

• The Commonwealth and Protectorate 1649-59
• Restoration. Cromwell dies Sept. 1658. Regime
  dependent on his personality, and collapses
  within months. Army stages new coup but has no
  viable proposals for a settlement, and no leader
  of Cromwells stature.
• Near-collapse of government, late 1659 paves way
  for Moncks entry and peaceful Restoration under
  Charles II, May 1660.

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Charles 11
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What went Wrong? The Exclusion Crisis

• By mid-1670s, a looming succession question.
  Charles had no legitimate children his brother
  and heir James a zealous Catholic convert.
• Catholicism still seen as sinister, and
  associated with absolutism.
• 1678- revelation by Titus Oates of a (bogus)
  Popish Plot to murder Charles and put James on
  the throne.
• National panic- calls for James to be excluded
  from the succession. 3 new Parliaments, 1679-80,
  all exclusionist. Charles refuses to give way.
  Political nation splits into Tories (loyalists)
  and Whigs (exclusionists). Deadlock, and fear of
  new civil war. 41 is here again.

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No civil war- why not?

• Memories of 1642- people knew where it might
  lead. ii. No certainty that James would ever
  become king. iii. Whigs could not agree on an
  alternative
• Charles kept his nerve, panic subsided. When he
  died (Feb 85), James succeeded without
  opposition.

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James Duke of York
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Why did James 11 blow it? The Glorious Revolution

• James had a supportive Parliament, strong
  finances, able to double the size of the army to
  20,000.
• BUT- provocative policies Jamess sense of a
  Catholic mission, and his political style-
  authoritarian, absolutist, arbitrary.
• aroused fears of popery and arbitrary rule. Royal
  pregnancy raised fears of Catholic succession.

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Two Treatises of Government (1689) by John Locke
provided a theoretical justification for
resistance to James II.

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Locke and Contract Theory

• Locke expounded some original notions.
• But many of his ideas differed little from
  earlier Parliamentarian and resistance theorists.
  He accepted that a contractual relationship
  existed between people and their governors, and
  that governors could be resisted if they breached
  the terms of this agreement
• He opposed patriarchalism, denying that political
  and paternal power were equivalent.

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The Glorious Revolution 1688

• 1688 Revolution.
• William of Orange (husband of James Protestant
  daughter Mary) led an army to intervene/invade at
  invitation of some Protestant aristocrats.
• James had the larger army (25,000 against
  Williams 14,000) but lost his nerve and fled.
• William made king he and his wife Mary become
  joint king and queen.

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Bill of Rights

• Declaration of Rights drawn up by Parliament and
  read to William and Mary at their Coronation.
• levying of money for, or to the use of the
  crowne was illegal. All elections should be held
  freely without any force. No standing army in
  peacetime.
• constitutional provisions the rule of law
  Parliament - should be free elections, frequent
  parliaments and freedom of speech the limits on
  the monarch.
• Declaration later turned into a statute, the Bill
  of Rights in 1689

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Consequences of 1688

• 1688 Settlement provides that the king must
  always be a Protestant (this is still in force)
• said kings must rule by law, call regular
  Parliament, not keep a standing army in peace
  time.
• More important was the new political climate now
  clear that any English king who went too far
  could and would be thrown out.