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The Concept of Opposition in Early Stuart England*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Robert Zaller
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Extract

To Clarendon, the English Civil War was an exercise in folly, pride, and the tragic corruption of the species. Since then, many a thesis has been advanced to explain the Great Rebellion, only to fall before fresh generations of skeptics, each demolishing a predecessor's orthodoxy to set up their own. But old notions die hard. They linger in the words and concepts that once expressed them, which remain impregnated with the old meaning even when the nominal definitions have changed. Such a concept is that of the “Opposition” in early Stuart England. Its history is virtually coextensive with the historiography of the English Revolution, and it remains today at the center of the debate on the origins and meaning of the Revolution.

The concept of an Opposition in prerevolutionary England can be traced back to the eighteenth century. David Hume, writing of the 1620s, saw party conflict as an inherent and fundamentally progressive element in the clash between privilege and prerogative. The “wise and moderate,” he asserted, “regarded the very rise of parties as a happy prognostic of the establishment of liberty.” Here already is the germ of the Whig interpretation, which emerges full-blown a century later in Macaulay:

[W]hen, in October of 1641, the Parliament reassembled after a short recess, two hostile parties, essentially the same with those which, under different names, have ever since contended, and are still contending, for the direction of public affairs, appeared confronting each other. During some years they were designated as Cavaliers and Roundheads. They were subsequently called Tories and Whigs; nor does it seem that these appellations are likely soon to become obsolete.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , Fall 1980 , pp. 211 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1980

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Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this essay was read at the Southern Conference on British Studies, November, 1977.

References

1 Hume, David, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, 6 vols. (New York, 1880), 4: 315.Google Scholar

2 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, 2 vols. (London, 1871), 1: 50.Google Scholar

3 Gardiner, S.R., History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 10 vols. (London, 1883), 6: 120.Google Scholar

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5 Pearl, Valerie, London and the Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution (London, 1961)Google Scholar; cf. Ashton, Robert, The Crown and the Money Market (Oxford, 1960)Google Scholar and, The City and the Court 1603-1643 (Cambridge, 1979).Google Scholar

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7 In Hexter, J.H., Reappraisals in History (Evanston, 1961), pp. 117–162.Google Scholar

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9 E.g., Foster, Elizabeth Read, “Procedures in the House of Lords during the Early Stuart Periods,” Journal of British Studies, 5 (1964–1965): 64–68Google Scholar; Flemion, Jess Stoddart, “The Struggle for the Petition of Right in the House of Lords: The Study of an Opposition Victory,” Journal of Modern History, 45 (1973: 193–210)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Christiansen, Paul, “The Peers, the People, and Parliamentary Management in the First Six Months of the Long Parliament,” Journal of Modern History, 49 (1977): 575–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sharpe, Kevin, “The Earl of Arundel, His Circle and the Opposition to the Duke of Buckingham, 1618-1628,” in Sharpe, Kevin, ed., Faction and Parliament: Essays in Early Stuart History (Oxford, 1978).Google Scholar

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11 Quoted by Walzer, p. 257. The same passage is cited by Zagorin as well, (Court and Country, p. 77).

12 Ibid, p. 90.

13 Ibid, p. 105.

14 Ibid, p. 100.

15 Elton, G.R., Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government: Papers and Reviews 1946-1972, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1974), 2: 155–89.Google Scholar

16 See Elton, G.R., “Tudor Government: The Points of Contact-I. Parliament,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fifth Series, vol. 24 (1974): 183–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “II. The Council,” ibid. 25 (1975): 195-211; “III. The Court,” ibid. 26 (1976): 211-28 (hereafter cited as TRHS).

17 A by no means exhaustive list must include Barnes, T.G., Somerset 1625-1660 (Oxford, 1961)Google Scholar; Everitt, A. M., The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion 1640-1660 (Leicester, 1966)Google Scholar; Cliffe, J.T., The Yorkshire Gentry (London, 1969)Google Scholar; Smith, A. Hassall, County and Court: Government and Politics in Elizabethan Norfolk (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar; Morrill, J.S., Chesire 1630-1660: County Government and Society during the English Revolution (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar; Fletcher, Anthony, A County Community in Peace and War: Sussex 1600-1660 (London, 1975)Google Scholar; Hirst, Derek, The Representative of the People? (Cambridge, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clark, Peter, English Provincial Society from the Reformation to the Revolution: Religion, Politics and Society in Kent 1500-1640 (Brighton, 1977).Google Scholar

18 Elton, , Studies, p. 188.Google Scholar

19 Ibid, p. 182.

20 Ibid, p. 189, 157.

21 Ibid, p. 189.

22 Elton, , “Tudor Government … I,” TRHS, p. 200.Google Scholar

23 J.N. Ball long ago suggested “a close tactical liaison” between Buckingham, Charles, and alleged oppositionists like Phdips, Sandys and Digges in the Parliament of 1624 (“Sir John Eliot at the Oxford Parliament, 1625,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, (Nov. 1955): 113Google Scholar (hereafter cited as BIHR). Royal overtures to individual MPs were in fact common, and one must presume elicited a certain degree of response from time to time.

24 History, 61 (February, 1976): 1–27.Google Scholar See also Russell's, “The Foreign Policy Debate in the House of Commons in 1621,” The Historical Journal, 20 (1977): 289–309CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “The Examination of Mr. Mallory after the Parliament of 1621,” BIHR, 50 (1977); 125–32Google Scholar; and “The Parliamentary Career of John Pym, 1621-9,” in Clark, Peter, et al., eds., The English Commonwealth, 1547-1640: Essays in Politics and Society (New York, 1979).Google Scholar

25 See Bellamy, John, The Tudor Law of Treason: An Introduction (Toronto, 1979).Google Scholar

26 In his Impeachment and Parliamentary Judicature in Early Stuart England (London, 1974)Google Scholar, Tite contends that the term “impeachment” cannot properly be used to describe the proceedings against Bacon in 1621 and Cranfield in 1624. His argument is perhaps technically correct, but the very distinction he draws between impeachment and other forms of judicature—that it is politically motivated—seems to justify its use in these cases.

27 Rushworth, John, ed., Historical Collection …, 7 vols. (London, 1721–1722) 1: 46–52.Google Scholar

28 Notestein, Wallace, Relf, Frances, Simpson, Hartley, eds., Commons Debates 1621, 7 vols. (New Haven, 1935), 4: 57.Google Scholar

29 Cf. Zaller, Robert, The Parliament of 1621 (Berkeley, 1971), pp. 47–8.Google Scholar

30 Vol. 49. no. 4 (Dec. 1977).

31 Journal of Modern History, 50, no. 1 (March, 1978).Google Scholar

32 State Papers Domestic, P.R.O. 14/121/136; Johnson, Robert C., Keeler, Mary Frear, Cole, Maija Jansson, Bidwell, William B., eds., Commons Debates 1628, 4 vols. (New Haven, 1977–1778), 4: 65–6.Google Scholar I am indebted to J.H. Hexter for this reference.

33 Rushworth, 1: 43-44.

34 Grosart, Alexander B., ed., Negotium Posterorum, 2 vols., (n.p., 1881), 1: 170.Google Scholar