Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T08:17:36.698Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Charles Stuart, That Man of Blood”*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Patricia Crawford
Patricia Crawford*
Affiliation:
University of Western Australia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

By 1648 in England many of parliament's supporters believed that peace was as far away as ever. The members of parliament who had declared they were fighting to rescue the king from the hands of his evil counsellors may have rethought their views about the personal responsibility of the king, but they still believed that the only viable settlement would be one based upon agreement between king and parliament. Consequently they had dispatched, with wearisome monotony, negotiators and messengers with propositions for peace to the king. Their initiatives were always destroyed in the last resort because Charles refused the terms offered, but apart from governing without him for the time being, the members of parliament could think of nothing else but a settlement based on agreement with Charles. The political thinking of the majorities in both Houses was bound by convention: a king was essential. Outside parliament, pamphleteers had questioned the importance of the king, but parliament's view was not seriously threatened until 1647 when it showed itself incapable of settling the kingdom and the Army showed a willingness to intervene in politics. The outbreak of the second Civil War in 1648 convinced the soldiers that parliament's policies of either seeking terms with the king or of ignoring him were alike futile and dangerous. So long as Charles remained alive, at the center of royalist hopes, so long would wars continue and lives be lost. At this point the Army spoke of the king in a new way.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , Spring 1977 , pp. 41 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I wish to thank my friends who have helped with this article, especially Dr. D. E. Kennedy who first introduced me to the idea of blood guilt.

References

1. For a discussion of this see Bloch, M., The Royal Touch, trans. Armstrong, J. E. (London, 1973), and especially pp. 207–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Journals of the House of Commons, II, 151Google Scholar.

3. Milton, John, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, in The Works of John Milton (New York, 1931–1938), V, 20Google Scholar.

4. Attenborough, F. L. (ed.), The Laws of the Earliest English Kings, (Cambridge, 1922)Google Scholar. Jolliffe, J. E. A. (ed.), The Constitutional History of Medieval England from the English Settlement to 1485 (4th ed.; London, 1961), pp. 3–5Google Scholar. Whitelock, D. (ed.), English Historical Documents c. 500-1042 (London, 1955), pp. 391–92Google Scholar. Pollock, F. and Maitland, F. W., The History of English Law (2nd ed.; Cambridge, 1923), II, 448–88Google Scholar.

5. Salisbury Constitutions of 1236 quoted in The Canon Law of The Church of England (London, 1947), p. 60Google Scholar. The seventh-century Council of Toledo had debarred clergy involved in blood judgments from handling the sacraments and from further advancing in holy orders. Baldwin, J. W., Masters, Princes and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter & his Circle (Princeton, 1970), I, 178Google Scholar. In some instances, blood per se could be a pollutant, even for menstruating women. A seventh-century penitential excluded women from the church and from communion during menstruation, and even in the seventeenth century one minister was said to have refused the sacrament to a menstruating woman. McNeill, J. T. and Gamer, H. M. (eds.), Medieval Handbooks of Penance (New York, 1938), p. 197; K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 1971), p. 38Google Scholar.

6. Cabala she scrinia sacra (London, 1663), p. 260Google Scholar. Williams refused to be consecrated by Archbishop Abbot. Abbot was suspended from his duties while a royal commission investigated his offence. Subsequently a special release was issued under the Great Seal and he was reinstated. Gardiner, S. R., History of England 1603-1642 (London, 1883–1884), IV, 139–40Google Scholar; Dictionary of National Biography, articles on George Abbot (1562-1633) and John Williams (1582-1650).

7. New Catholic Encyclopaedia (Washington, 1967)Google Scholar, Reordination; Churches, dedication of.

8. Whitelocke, Bulstrode, Memorials of the English Affairs (Oxford, 1853), I, 176Google Scholar.

9. Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, ed. Macray, W. Dunn (Oxford, 1888), I, 1–4Google Scholar.

10. King Henry V, IV, iGoogle Scholar.

11. Romeo and Juliet, III, iGoogle Scholar.

12. Richard II, I, iGoogle Scholar.

13. Beard, Thomas, The Theatre of Gods Judgements (4th ed.; London, 1648), esp. pp. 208, 200, 226Google Scholar.

14. For which see Crawford, P., “A Study of the Attitudes of the Parliamentary Opposition to the Crown, 1642-1649” (M.A. thesis, University of Western Australia, 1964)Google Scholar.

15. Commons Journals, II, 741, 841Google Scholar. Peace negotiations were renewed because there was a strong group in the House of Commons desperately anxious for peace. Hexter, J. H., The Reign of King Pym (Cambridge, Mass., 1941), p. 17Google Scholar.

16. Goodwin, John, Anti Cavalierisme, [21 Oct.] 1642Google Scholar, printed in Haller, W. (ed.), Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution, 1638-1647 (New York, 1934), II, 260, 234Google Scholar; I, 30-32.

17. Commons Journals, II, 847Google Scholar.

18. Calamy, Edmund, Gods free Mercy to England, 23 Feb. 1642, p. 49Google Scholar (Cornmarket reprint, Fast Sermons, 2, p. 191Google Scholar).

19. Firth, C. H. and Rait, R. S. (eds.), Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642-1660 (London, 1911)), I, 80–82Google Scholar. The unexpiated blood of the Marian martyrs was one of the sins listed by Henry Scudder in his fast sermon to the House of Commons on October 30, 1644; Scudder, Henry, Gods warning to England by the Voyce of his Rod, 1644, p. 19Google Scholar (Cornmarket reprint, Fast Sermons, 13, p. 307Google Scholar).

20. Green, M. A. E. (ed.), Calendar of the Proceedings of the Committee for Compounding &c., 1643-1660 (London, 1889)Google Scholar. The degrees of guilt were set forth in the propositions which parliament submitted to the king from the Nineteen Propositions onward. For which, see Gardiner, S. R. (ed.), The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625-1660 (3rd ed.; Oxford, 1906)Google Scholar.

21. [Bowles, Edward], Plaine English, 12 Jan. 1643Google Scholar, Thomason Tract, (hereafter, T.T.), E. 84. 32, p. 18.

22. [Ram, Robert], The Souldiers Catechisme: Composed for the Parliaments Army (London, 1644), pp. 7, 8, 14Google Scholar. [Not in Thomason].

23. “So that to sum up all, the Parliament told him plainly in their late letter sent to him at Oxford, That he was guilty of all the innocent blood shed in England, Scotland, & Ireland”; Lilburne, John, Regall Tyrannie Discovered, 6 Jan. 1647, p. 57Google Scholar.

24. Trevor-Roper, H. R., “The Fast Sermons of the Long Parliament” in Religion, the Reformation and Social Change (New York, 1968), pp. 317–19Google Scholar.

25. Calamy, Edmund, Englands Antidote against the Plague of Civil Warre, 22 Oct. 1644, p. 27Google Scholar (Cornmarket reprint, Fast Sermons, 13, p. 153Google Scholar).

26. Scudder, , Gods Warning to England, p. 23Google Scholar (Cornmarket, ibid., p. 311).

27. Woodcock, Francis, Christ's Warning-piece, 30 Oct., 1644, pp. 30–31Google Scholar (Commarket, ibid., pp. 360–61); Staunton, Edmund, Pheneas's Zeal in Execution of Judgement, 30 Oct. 1644, p. 24Google Scholar (Cornmarket, ibid., p. 270).

28. Charles I to Henriette Marie, 14 Jan. 1645, The King's Cabinet opened (1645), in Park, T. (ed.), Harleian Miscellany (London, 1808–1813), V, 533Google Scholar.

29. Love, Christopher, Englands Distemper. A sermon preacht at Uxbridge,30 Jan. 1645, T.T.,E. 274.15, p. 37Google Scholar.

30. Commons Journals, IV, 40, 69Google Scholar. SirDugdale, William, A short view of the late troubles … [with a] narrative of the treaty of Uxbridge (Oxford, 1681), pp. 764–65Google Scholar.

31. Firth, C. H. (ed.), The Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow (Oxford, 1894), I, 118Google Scholar.

32. The Remonstrance of the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland to his Majesty, July 5, 1645, printed in Rushworth, , Historical Collections, Pt. 4 (1), 229–30Google Scholar.

33. Ludlow, , Memoirs, I, 136Google Scholar; Marten, Henry, The Independency of England endeavoured to be maintained (1648)Google Scholar, in Old Parliamentary History (London, 1751–1762), XVII, 61Google Scholar.

34. Milton, , Tenure of Kings, Works, V, 6Google Scholar.

35. Correspondence of the Scots Commissioners in London, 1644-46, ed. Meikle, H. W. [Roxburghe Club] (London, 1917), p. 86Google Scholar.

36. May, Thomas, A Breviary of the History of the Parliament of England (1655)Google Scholar, reprinted in Maseres, F. (ed.), Select Tracts relating to the Civil Wars in England (London, 1815), I, 72Google Scholar.

37. Many of those who discussed blood guilt appear in Capp's lists of Fifth Monarchists; Capp, Bernard, The Fifth Monarchy Men. A Study in Seventeenth Century English Millenarianism (London, 1972)Google Scholar.

38. Journals of the House of Lords, VIII, 99Google Scholar.

39. Lilburne, John, The Just Mans Justification, Aug., 1647, pp. 10–11Google Scholar.

40. [Wildman, John], A Cal to all the Souldiers of the Armie by the free people of England, [29 Oct.] 1647, T.T.,E. 412.10 p. 2Google Scholar.

41. Woodhouse, A. S. P. (ed.), Puritanism and Liberty Being the Army Debates (1647-49), (2nd ed.; London, 1951), pp. 100, 107Google Scholar.

42. Firth, C. H. (ed.), Clarke Papers [Camden Soc., new ser.] (London, 1891–1901), I, 417Google Scholar.

43. Woodhouse, , Puritanism and Liberty, p. 452Google Scholar.

44. Clarke Papers, I, 440–41Google Scholar.

45. Cromwell answered Harrison “by putting severall cases in which merther was nott to bee punished.” Ibid., p. 417.

46. Gardiner, S. R., History of the Great Civil War 1642-1649 (London, 1894), IV, 22–23Google Scholar. One of the soldiers was shot, an act incurring blood guilt according to Richard Overton. Wolfe, D. M. (ed.), Leveller Manifestoes of the Puritan Revolution (New York, 1944), p. 363Google Scholar.

47. “The earnest Petition of many Free-born People of this Nation” in A Declaration of Some Proceedings, 14 Feb. 1648Google Scholar in Haller, W. and Davies, G. (eds.), The Leveller Tracts, 1647-1653 (New York, 1944), p. 107Google Scholar. See also J. Lilburne, The People's Prerogative, 17 Feb. 1648, quoted by Wolfe, , Leveller Manifestoes, p. 69Google Scholar.

48. Firth suggests that the author, Adjutant-General William Allen, was the same William Allen who was an agitator in 1647, a trooper in Cromwell's horse. Clarke Papers, II, 432–33Google Scholar.

49. Allen, William, A faithful Memorial of that remarkable Meeting of many Officers of the Army (1659)Google Scholar, in Scott, Sir W. (ed.), Somers Tracts (London, 1809–1815), V, 501Google Scholar. For the dating of the meeting see Gardiner, , Civil War, IV, 117Google Scholar, n. 2.

50. Abbott, W. C. (ed.), The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (Cambridge, Mass., 1937–1947), I, 644, 696, 690, 638Google Scholar.

51. Wedgwood, C. V., The Trial of Charles I (London, 1964), p. 77Google Scholar and n. 30.

52. Underdown, D., Pride's Purge, Politics in the Puritan Revolution (Oxford, 1971), pp. 163–72Google Scholar. Gardiner, , Civil War, IV, 281–87Google Scholar.

53. Wedgwood, , Trial of Charles I, p. 77Google Scholar and n.30, does not accept the pro-Royalist sources' interpretation of the purpose of Denbigh's mission.

54. Clarke Papers, II, xxxGoogle Scholar.

55. Gardiner, , Civil War, IV, 288Google Scholar.

56. Abbott, , Writings and Speeches, I, 756Google Scholar.

57. Rushworth, , Historical Collections, Pt. IV (2), 1243Google Scholar. While it appeared that the execution of these two soldiers of fortune fell within the rules of war, the execution of officers after a siege was exceptional in England at this time.

58. The True Copy of a Petition promoted in the Army, 18 Oct. 1648, T.T., E. 468.18.

59. The Moderate, 10-17 Oct. 1648, ibid., E. 468.2, p. 17.

60. Rushworth, , Historical Collections, VII, 1311–12Google Scholar.

61. Remonstrance, 16 Nov. 1648, in Old Parliamentary History, XVIII, 228Google Scholar.

62. A Declaration of the English Army Now in Scotland, 1 Aug. 1650, in Woodhouse, , Puritanism and Liberty, p. 477Google Scholar. The Declaration, under the Imprimatur of Rushworth, was in answer to a paper directed by the Scots, “To the Under-Officers and Soldiers.”

63. Clarke Papers, II, 58Google Scholar.

64. For discussion of Army division over policies generally, see Underdown, Pride's Purge, pp. 182 ff.

65. Bodleian Library, Clarendon MS 34, f. 7.

66. Clarke Papers, II, 163–70Google Scholar and notes.

67. Cokayn, George, Flesh Expiring, and the Spirit Inspiring, 29 Nov. 1648, pp. 11, 16–17Google Scholar. (Cornmarket reprint, Fast Sermons, 32, pp. 27, 32–33Google Scholar).

68. Brooks, Thomas, Gods Delight in the Progresse of the Upright, 26 Dec. 1648, pp. 15, 17Google Scholar (Cornmarket, ibid., pp. 101, 103).

69. King Charls his tryal (1649), pp. 4, 41–43Google Scholar.

70. Cook, John, King Charles his Case (1649), in Somers Tracts, V, 233Google Scholar.

71. Hutchinson, Lucy, Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson (London, 1908), p. 266Google Scholar.

72. Ludlow, , Memoirs, I, 207, 205Google Scholar; II, 331.

73. King Charles his speech made upon the scaffold (1649), pp. 4–5Google Scholar.

74. The King's Cabinet Opened (1645), in Harleian Miscellany, V, 533Google Scholar. See also Bruce, J. (ed.), Charles I in 1646 [Camden Soc., LXIII] (London, 1856), 19, 80Google Scholar.

75. Cary, H. (ed.), Memorials of the Great Civil War, 1642-1652 (London, 1842), II, 117–19Google Scholar; The Moderate, 23 Jan. 1649.

76. Clarendon, History, V, 142Google Scholar.

77. Macray, W. D. (ed.), Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers (Oxford, 1876), III, 286Google Scholar.

78. Kent Archives Office, Diary of Sir Edward Dering, May 14, 1660. The regicides denied that they had acted unjustly, and accused the royalists of seeking blood and revenge. Hutchinson, , Memoirs, pp. 321–33Google Scholar; Ludlow, , Memoirs, II, 291–92Google Scholar. Pepys described Harrison's execution as “the first blood shed in revenge for the blood of the King.” Latham, R. and Matthews, W. (eds.), The Diary of Samuel Pepys (London, 1970), I, 265Google Scholar.

79. The Royal Martyr, or King Charles the first no Man of Blood but a Martyr for his people (London, [1662])Google Scholar, preface.

80. This service was continued in the prayer book until 1859.

81. Lee, M. H. (ed.), Diaries and Letters of Philip Henry (London, 1882), p. 236Google Scholar.

82. Goodwin, John, The Obstructours of Justice, [30 May] 1649, T.T., E. 557.2, p. 61Google Scholar.

83. Clarke Papers, II, 191–98Google Scholar.

84. Abbott, , Writings and Speeches, II, 127Google Scholar.

85. Scudder, , Gods Warning to England, p. 19Google Scholar (Cornmarket reprint, Fast Sermons, 13, p. 307Google Scholar).

86. [Ward, Nathaniel], The Simple Cobler of Aggavvum in America [29 Jan.] 1647, T.T.,E. 372.21, p. 73Google Scholar.